


Mercy a Thing For Gentler Climes

by TheWaffleBat



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Arthur Morgan Does Not Have Tuberculosis, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Dutch is getting a good ending for once, Eye Trauma, Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Protective Hosea Matthews, Sex, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Torture, Werewolf Arthur Morgan, Werewolves, in the same way holding a lit match under a swimming pool is a 'slow boil', it's not important I just thought it was a fun detail, local npc fucks the ghost of his dead wife, or I guess 'slow boil'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:01:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 75,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22649080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWaffleBat/pseuds/TheWaffleBat
Summary: Arthur let himself soften, turned to keep his eyes on the fire that glowed warm against the biting cold of the morning. “I know,” He said. “Things ain’t good for us right now, but… it ain’t safe. You know what the O’Driscolls are like, for folk like me.”“I’ve watched you kill, Arthur,” Said Pearson, and there was a flicker of that old fear deep in his eyes, never quite gone away. The smartest part of him still that blustering navy man taking command of the cooking to hide how terrified he was of them. Fear that was faint, but still sour, on the still air. “I’ve seen what you do to idiots who pick fights with us. You werewolves aren’t that fragile.”“We ain’t that strong, neither,” Arthur told him.The Pinkertons have been lost in the snow, and the law has bigger game on its mind. The O'Driscolls aren't as easy to lose.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan & Van der Linde Gang, Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith, Hosea Matthews/Dutch van der Linde
Comments: 191
Kudos: 420





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken, and slightly modified, from Jack London's _Call of the Wild_.
> 
> As a quick note, werewolves here look a lot like Monoflax's werewolves - I'm mostly using [this one](https://www.deviantart.com/monoflax/art/Denholm-Dump-772202510) as a reference.

Mrs Adler moved through camp like a ghost, pale and wan and not all there, like she was the one the O’Driscolls had killed and not her husband, and she hadn’t realised it yet. Sat on the porch of the women’s house with Abigail by her side, wrapped up against the cold in Dutch’s heavy bearskin coat. He’d given it before they came back from her ranch, offering her something to hold onto as her life burned to splinters behind her; she hadn’t offered it back, and Dutch hadn’t asked.

Her dull eyes flicked to him, shiny-wet and bright as new coins in the pink dawn. Arthur nodded to her, pulled his own coat more comfortably around his shoulders, and she shivered and looked away, huddled more deeply into Dutch’s coat. Abigail nodded back in answer for her, and tipped her head close to Mrs Adler’s ear to murmur more comforts.

Colter was… good enough for now, with the lethal weather easing back more often than not, like the fire at the Adler ranch had chased away the clouds black and heavy with snow. Like gettin’ John down safe from that mountain brought some good luck back with him, the golden sun givin’ its blessing to the golden boy bleeding steadily on Javier’s shoulder ‘cause God forbid he suffer something so awful as a little nibble from a wolf. They needed that good luck, with Davey in the ground, Mac and Sean lost to the winds and maybe dead too. But the awful, gnawing cold was easing with spring slowly clawing its way up the slopes, and there was plenty of clean water nearby and enough time in the day to get some firewood chopped before the night brought on early by the mountain’s heavy shadows chased them inside.

Still somethin’ of a shithole, ‘course; houses and a church further up the street collapsing in on themselves, timbers bared like some carcass’ bones long picked clean, and an awful, biting cold whose teeth scored deep howling through the little valley it was nestled in, the stinging stink of smoke drifting faintly with it. But there was something… pretty, almost, ‘bout the town.

Arthur passed by those houses and the church collapsing in on themselves, admired the snow settled on their timbers stained pink and blue by dawn’s gentle light and the deep shadows it cast, the pines rising tall and proud despite the bitter winters that always clung to mountain slopes. Admired a hawk circling high in the air, dark against a cloudless sky, and the spread of its feathers against the air as it swooped low, skimmed across the snow lower and lower, legs reaching, curved talons stretching, cruel-sharp; the death-shriek of a rabbit its triumph as it snatched up its prize and curved up into the sky. A ram pushing through the snow, agile over the black rock poking through, curled horns proud and strong and unbroken on his head. A tree, gnarled and old and alone; bowed by the driving wind, but unbroken.

His fingers itched for his pencil, and he shoved his hands inside his pockets against the urge, continued his patrol. Time enough later, to sit alone in his room while Dutch paced and grumbled and worked out how to guide them back to safety, stomach stuck to his spine with gnawing hunger as he gave up his share to Jack. Time when the gang was gathered around Pearson’s stewpot waiting for dinner because his food was hit-or-miss at the best of times but he had a real strange knack for turning half a packet of biscuits and a tin of salmon into a stew that lasted a week.

The sun rose, light bright and gold against the mountain slopes, and when Lenny came stumbling out of the shack he shared with Bill and Micah, repeater on his back and bleary eyes squinting into the snow glare, Arthur let him take over and retreated to the warmth of Pearson’s cooking fire.

He liked the mountains well enough, but he wasn’t enough of a fool to enjoy being out in the cold for hours, feet steadily going numb inside his boots and fingers freezing stiff in his pockets.

He enjoyed even less the camp rat loitering around, eyeing the crates of supplies Pearson had stacked in a corner like whatever food stored and stained in the bristles of his beard wasn’t keeping his blubber nice and thick as it was. “You know,” Arthur said, and thawed his hands over the fire, “You could do somethin’ useful, ‘stead of lingering ‘round here like a bad smell. Do some real work like the rest of us gotta.” He flexed his fingers against the ache in his nails, wrinkled his nose at the itch that went across his skin, and the leather of his gloves creaked in warning.

Uncle swayed, and squinted, and when he raised a bottle to his lips the drink splashed across his face.“‘S that any sorta way to greet y-you’re dearest uncle, Arthur?” He shook his head, rocked back on his heels, aghast. “ _Ohh_ , you’re a sssad man, Arthur Morgan. Real sad. The kinda… the sad kindaaa man who ain't never seen _love_ or, or _fun_ or… _joy_. The sad kinda man that m'makes me wanna shoot 'im 'cause he ain't never gonna have a good time like ol’ Uncle has!”

“I’m all heart,” Arthur agreed, and nodded to the stump across camp they were using to chop logs. “Heard Javier say firewood’s gettin’ low, git.”

“ _Sad man_ , Arthur Morgan,” Uncle mumbled, disappearing behind Pearson ducking inside to hide in some other warm corner.

Vaguely, Arthur wondered what kind of luck it would be if he died in that corner; if it would be one less belly to fill and mangy hide to protect or if Arthur would be the one who had to dig the grave. But, Arthur supposed, Uncle had learned well enough not to tease and press his luck with Arthur, and if he let the man die now it was a lot of wasted effort he’d gone to for a bit of peace and quiet.

“Thank God,” Pearson said, “Thought he'd never leave.”

“Didn't do it for you.”

Pearson snorted, held his hands to the fire too, and smoothed down the clump of fur of his moustache. “Well if that's you selfish I'd hate to see your charity,” He said. Flexed his fingers, licked his lips. Anxiety in the tight line of his shoulders below his coat. “But things ain't looking good Morgan. We're in real bad shape, I mean _real bad_ , it's…” He sighed, rubbed his hand over the bald patch on his head. His mouth thinned, dark eyes grave. “The way we're going,” He said, “We'll starve before we get off this mountain. We’ve got a lot of mouths to feed, and we keep trying to keep ‘em full the way we have been we’re dead before the week is out.”

Arthur had noticed. Seen Pearson watering down the food to make it stretch, chopping jerky and hardtack into smaller and smaller pieces, putting less and less in the pot. Seen him hounding Charles into going out and scavenging what little could be found, mouth set thin and wrinkles carving deeper as Charles could only bring back pine needles for tea and the white inner bark for the pot, or came back with a skinny rabbit over his shoulder, or his head shaking miserably, hands empty. Seen him despair, face the dark with his head in his hands.

“We’ll be alright,” Arthur said, because it wasn’t his place to say that. Even if optimism was stilted, awkward in his mouth, and Pearson spared him a glance that said he knew it was stilted and awkward, and to stop before he made it worse. Even if he knew the situation was as bad as Pearson said it was. He rubbed his eye, where frustration sat as a dull, thumping ache. “Weather’s easin' back for now, might be able to leave before long. And we always got you; push come to shove we eat you instead, you’re the fattest.”

“Funny,” Pearson grumbled, and pushed himself away from the fire, turned to fling himself at the bench leaning against the barn wall. The seat creaked under his sudden weight. “We’ve got three cans, tree bark, and half a rabbit for, what, fifteen people?” He shook his head again. “We need food, Morgan. Real food.”

“And what’chu want _me_ to do ‘bout it?” Arthur demanded, bared his teeth as his jaws ached, the leather of his gloves creaking in warning, skin prickling hot. Between them the fire spat, crawled along a log, as Pearson bowed his head, rubbed his face. “You heard what Dutch and Hosea said as well as I did; no guns, no going out if we don’t gotta.” And Hosea was the hunter, not Arthur - Hosea who put his nose to the ground, barked the orders Arthur followed to down an elk, a moose, a bear. And the weather was playing havoc on him, keeping him camp-bound and fireside.

Pearson launched himself out of his seat. “I’d say not starving counts as needing to go out!” He bellowed, brows low over his eyes, stare hard and unyielding - leaned close and tall as if he wasn’t an old, worn pillow of a man, soft and short and portly, and about as threatening as. “We’re running out of _time_ , Morgan,” Pearson said. “You leave it too long and we’ll all be too weak to do anything about it, and we’ll die. All of us.” Arthur held still, and met Pearson’s gaze until he deflated, turned away to sit on his bench again, head bowed. “We need food, Arthur,” He said, as quietly as a voice not made for quiet could go. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t dire.”

Arthur let himself soften, turned to keep his eyes on the fire that glowed warm against the biting cold of the morning. “I know,” He said. “Things ain’t good for us right now, but… it ain’t safe. You know what the O’Driscolls are like, for folk like me.”

“I’ve watched you kill, Arthur,” Said Pearson, and there was a flicker of that old fear deep in his eyes, never quite gone away. The smartest part of him still that blustering navy man taking command of the cooking to hide how terrified he was of them. Fear that was faint, but still sour, on the still air. “I’ve seen what you do to idiots who pick fights with us. You werewolves aren’t that fragile.”

“We ain’t that strong, neither,” Arthur told him.

But he was going to go out, was always going to go out as soon as Pearson brought it up. He was weak for the gang, those degenerates and lost souls with nowhere else to go that Dutch had gathered together. Always had been; old instincts in his head and heart traces that kept him bound, made him the workhorse who dragged them all where they needed to go, and maybe Pearson knew that. Maybe he’d learned more about werewolves than Arthur had ever given him credit for, knew that Arthur would grumble and growl and always, always comply when he needed to.

Maybe he just knew Arthur, right down to the bones because he was a simple man and a simpler beast; a dog dressed up in a man’s clothes and not welcome anywhere else, wild and feral like the wolves calling from deeper in the woodlands. But that was giving Pearson too much credit, making him someone like Dutch and Hosea and maybe even John. Making him someone who had seen the ragged, raw wounds of Arthur’s heart that beat for very few.

Arthur sighed, and took off his hat and boots and belts, left them safe in the corner wrapped up in his coat. Let his suspenders hang loose at his thighs, unbuckled his jeans, shivered and bared his monster’s teeth at the cold that sliced deep. “Go get Charles to help, and I’ll see what I can do,” He said, because he certainly wasn’t going to promise anything, and added, “If any O’Driscolls are about and I get turned into a rug 'cause of you you’re the one tellin’ Dutch.”

Pearson nodded, answered, went into the barn to tell Charles to get Tamia ready while Arthur changed. Rare privacy in a life that didn’t allow it and Arthur let himself stretch out, slipping between shapes as his bone stretched, skin prickling with fur growing soft and winter-dense, wolf’s teeth filling out the mouth they were always meant to fit. Kicked his jeans from legs, shrugged off his shirt before his arms popped loose from his shoulders, breathed deep as his ribs pushed out, chest deepening, muscle rolling beneath his skin as his form took shape, and he dropped to his paws, the long toes and claws of his hands digging into the packed dirt.

Big and bulky, ugly scarring all along his flank and a hole in his ear, Arthur sat down a wolf, the brush of his half-tail tucked neatly by his side.

The cold bit at his nose when he wetted it with a lick, but the soft brown fluff of his wolf’s winter coat was blessedly warm; a relief to wear after so long human, nice and loose over his bones. Charles blinked at him, and stared, and huffed at himself. Arthur stretched out a few aches - odd, that in six months running with them he hadn't seen Arthur change, but at least he didn't seem too perturbed now that he had seen it. Too many men Dutch had brought in had turned their eyes from it, cringing and frightened of his shape resting by the fire. They were usually the first to run when they were chased into trouble, but here was Charles, head tipped to the snowy valley outside Colter’s broken fence, fearlessly meeting Arthur's blue wolf's eyes. “Come on,” He said, swinging himself into Taima's saddle, flexing his wounded hand. “I found tracks just south of here - we’ll catch something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I took a break, and like a fool I'm coming back with a longer work when I said I wasn't going to do one. Oh well; either way, I played Red Dead 2 recently, and oh god it hurt, so now I'm doing an obligatory fix-it. Updates probably won't be very regular because I'm horrendously busy at the moment, but if I don't start getting it out now I won't until April at least, and I don't want to do that. I have a few chapters already done so there's something of a buffer, and I'll try to get one out once a fortnight at least.
> 
> (Also go read muadnait's [see me bare my teeth for you](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1393294) series for more Red Dead werewoofs, it's excellent).


	2. Chapter 2

Two deer bulked out more by winter fur than meat wasn’t a particularly big haul, not like the elk that had sped off into the trees as they loped alongside the stream trickling towards the lake in the south, but it was decent enough. With Charles unable to draw the bow on his back, and a lone wolf - even a werewolf, and a werewolf like Arthur who was bigger and sturdier than most, dense with muscle - no real match for anything stronger than a buck, two deer would keep the gang well fed for a little while longer, and if they had found two then they could find more when they needed to, and more. Charles’ hand was healing, maybe soon healed enough to hunt properly, and they could bag a real prize.

But that was for later, much later than he could afford to think about when they were lost in the frozen mountains, never quite sure if the Pinkertons had been left behind, or the O’Driscolls from the Adler Ranch were well and truly gone.

For now they had food, and two does Charles lashed to Taima’s saddle wasn’t an elk, wouldn’t feed them for half as long, but it was something. It was enough, maybe more than enough, and maybe even better than they deserved, too - maybe it was the Lord taking pity on them for being fool enough to try to survive Ambarino’s vicious winter, after months living soft near Blackwater. Maybe it was an apology for that distant future Dutch had dreamed and almost seized, that fenceless plot of land stretching from edge to edge of the sky, with its little houses they could fill along its wide street, space at its end for the palace he would build for he and Hosea. A home for the vagrants he’d called to his campfires the way men had called the wolves that were the first dogs to theirs.

Charles grabbed Taima’s reins, clicked his tongue against his teeth to call her into following, and trudged through the powdery snow back to the trail. Arthur followed alongside easily - even for such a big beast he didn’t sink down half so deep - and when he met Charles’ eyes the man huffed, shook his head in despair.

They walked upstream, fording through the water silvery under the cold light of an overcast sky now and then to break up the trail - no point going to all that effort hunting if they were just leading hungry wolves right to camp, who might do Arthur the kindness off finishing off Marston for good. Natural ones, anyway; there were plenty of the unnatural kind waiting at Pearson's pot, silver Hosea and blond Micah and Arthur soon enough, and Bill the grizzly bear lumbering in beside them.

The spring sun had risen high while they tracked the deer, pale and dim through the clouds, and through the long hours walking back it began to set, glowing gold from the distant, cloudless horizon, spilling warm and pink through the mountain passes. The wind picked up, flung powdery new-fallen snow back into the air. The shadows of the mountains cast heavy over Colter fell over them, too, and Charles blew on his fingers in the bitter chill settling on their shoulders with it. “Damn this weather,” He mumbled, rare complaint, and stumbled on the uneven slope.

Arthur rumbled agreement, and he and Charles picked their way to safer footing.

When a bear starved from the long winter blocked the path Charles took them far off the trail around it, and they found an elk half buried in the snow, crows half-heartedly pulling at strips of meat frozen tough as leather; antlers sawn from his head, close to the skull. Charles' jaw clenched tight when he knelt down beside it, put a gloved hand on the fur of its throat glued stiff by blood. Let out a breath through his nose, too harsh to be a sigh, and rested his fingers just below the crater of its shoulder that had taken the worst of a shotgun blast, stroking gently.

“Took a long time to die,” He said, and hatred for its hunters ran dark beneath the upset scrape of his voice. “They didn’t have the grace to butcher him properly. Think it’s those O’Driscolls you saw at the ranch? We’re close enough for it.”

Arthur shrugged. He didn’t know, and most of _them_ were already dead anyway, half buried in the snow and strips of meat frozen tough as leather bared by gunshots picked at half-heartedly by crows. Maybe it was them, maybe it was other hunters, cruel and callous, though Arthur’d hardly given the deer on Taima’s back a kinder end either. Death wasn’t kind, whether it came quick with a bullet or a flash of teeth or took hours, fighting vainly, and Arthur'd killed too many people too remorselessly to think there was grace in it.

Charles' mouth pressed thin, eyes dark as he studied the mangled mess of the elk's shoulder. He shook his head. "Come on," He said, and gathered up Taima’s trailing reins, "Let's get back." He led them back to the road to camp, and through the long hours back home spoke half to Arthur and mostly to himself about clean, quick kills, because no one wanted to die slowly.

Arthur liked Charles, he thought. There was an ease to him by Arthur’s side that only Dutch and John and Jack seemed to have - Abigail, too. Didn’t care that he had no human mouth to speak with and the mouth he did have couldn’t speak words they’d understand; trudging on, perfectly trusting that the hulking shadow of a beast by his side, head and shoulders over his kin, would never turn that bear trap of a mouth on him, would never dig claws sharp and curved and cruel as eagle’s talons into his skin or tear through his throat.

No fear sour on the cold wind for the animal eyes glowing through the dark by his side, the blood bright on his teeth. And Charles had earned his place in the gang, out where they should all still be; more than earned it, maybe, if Arthur let himself remember fleeing the old camp on the banks of the Montana river - the lawmen picking through the trees, bullets shattering the ground beneath their feet, dust picked up in the scuffle as they all turned their teeth on the challengers to make time for the gang to escape. Running from them, when too many men made their way across the river, fire licking against wagon walls and dry grass; Boadicea’s scream as she was knocked out dead from underneath him and Dutch haloed by the bright moon, blood splattered across his face, hauling Arthur up on The Count's back behind him. Charles at their side, firing his shotgun from horseback as he cradled close his burned hand.

And he’d stayed, when maybe it would have been better for him to go.

Maybe Arthur shouldn’t be so surprised, that Charles was worth more than they could pay him or that he was staying with the gang at all. Dutch collected the lost and the lonely the way most men did buttons, the only man in the world who looked someone in the eye and saw the worth of a beggar or a bastard or a lost young werewolf more feral dog than anything else. And Charles was worth a hell of a lot more than the world said he did, keeping them all alive the way he was doing. Worth ten of Bill, that was for sure.

Worth more than needing to tip his head to Arthur when they rode into Colter, the gang crowding around and joy bursting bright in their faces as they realised they were going to have a proper meal for the first time in weeks, close enough to murmur, “Thanks, Arthur,” As if he wouldn’t have been able to work out how to kill two deer on his own. As if he’d enjoyed Arthur’s company, silent in his shadow.

Arthur shrugged, and didn’t expect Charles to ask him out again, and slunk away to his hut where Dutch was waiting on the doorstep, glowering darker than the clouds rolling down from the north, to change.

-:-

“Were you followed?”

“No.”

“Did you _see_ anyone?”

Arthur huffed, adjusted the lie of his belt. Undid it again and threaded it back through the loops of his jeans, pulled a notch tighter - he was getting thin again. The hissing scrape of it was loud in the silence of Arthur’s hut. “Not a soul, Dutch, an’ you can ask Charles if you don’ believe me. Didn’t see no one, didn’t smell no one, didn’t hear no one. Ain’t no fools but us wintering this deep in the mountains.” He rolled his shoulders against the pull of his shirt, bared his wolf’s teeth against the tightness of human skin - he always hated going back to it. “All we found was some dead elk hunters had killed and didn’t butcher, an’ there weren’t no prints but ours there, too.”

Dutch let out a breath, sharp and short, whirling away to run his hands through his hair. Faced the door as he smoothed down his moustache.

“You know I don’t take risks like that Dutch,” Arthur said, shrugging on his coat. “I know the O’Driscolls are hidin’ up here with us. I do. But they don’t know Charles an’ I ain’t no Hosea or Micah - there ain’t many white wolves out there, or blonde ones, but there’s a hell of a lot of brown wolves. Even if they’d seen us, it’s just a feller out with his hunting partner, ain’t that much to make ‘em think of us.”

The fire in the hearth spat a little, its light spilling warm across the worn floorboards, the threadbare rug. Windows rattling with the stiff wind blowing down from the mountains. A good enough shelter after they’d fled to Colter with nothing - too good for the scowl Dutch gave it, or maybe just not worth the effort of it.

Dutch swallowed, jaw tight, at the sight of the little hut, old anger shadowed in his dark eyes. Younger grief in the set of his shoulders, muscle drawn taut and hard against Annabelle’s weight even years after he’d set her body down in her grave.

Arthur stepped up beside him, and Dutch didn’t shrug away the weight of his hand on his arm. Shuddered under the touch. “They’d have made a rug of you just for the fun of it,” Dutch murmured, and his voice scraped harsh out of his throat. “Just because they know I make it a point to protect your kind, when the world don’t see anything wrong in making you taxidermy just for some backwoods clubhouse wall or some trophy hunter too much a coward to kill you himself.”

“I know,” Arthur said, and he blinked hard against Annabelle’s lovely face twisted and broken by Colm’s hospitality, mangled between wolf and woman and delivered to camp just about alive enough to die in Dutch’s arms, cupping his jaw and running a claw over his lip, murmuring her love-growls to him. She’d have been made into a statue for sure, if she’d not been smart enough not to or been beaten too weak to shift - set up in a hotel where Dutch was sure to see her, skin pulled tight across a wooden frame as if that was any sort of replacement for the real woman underneath.

She’d been a brown wolf too. Brown eyes and brown fur and a splash of white down her throat.

Arthur shook those thoughts away. If there was a heaven that welcomed her through its gates then Annabelle wouldn’t want them to dwell, wouldn’t want Dutch spending all his days looking for a woman whose soft smile made him fumble a little for his words the way hers had, and Arthur had cared for her too much to let her wants fall on deaf ears. “I know Dutch,” He said gently, and nudged him to a seat by the fire. “But I ain’t got any plans of letting the O’Driscoll’s pull that trick, and for now they don’t know where we are, and most of ‘em wouldn’t recognise me anyway. Charles and I got some food, we lost the law, and we ain’t dyin’ any time soon. Let’s jus’... listen to Hosea for once, take it a day at a time. Ain’t got anything else to do.”

Dutch sat, shivered against the warmth rolling across his legs, and sighed. Put his hand over his eyes, elbow leaned on the arm of the chair. He looked small, sat like that; like the cold had snatched away his spirit as well as their house's warmth. “I know son,” He said. “I know. But I worry about you, and about Hosea and Micah and Bill. I'm worried 'bout Sean and Mac. Even without them O’Driscolls and the Pinkertons the world ain’t kind to you. I worry about the gang, in this godawful cold and with no money even when we leave these mountains. Ain’t nothing in this world that’ll stop me worryin’ for you.”

Arthur grimaced. “Well,” He said, and swallowed the words building up behind his teeth about how maybe trusting Micah, dangerously out of control and unwilling to listen to common sense or follow orders at the best of times, was a bad idea and had always been a bad idea even on the smallest jobs before the Blackwater mess. It wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Can’t do much ‘bout some of those, but we got food on the table and shelter from these storms. It’s enough.”

Dutch nodded, slowly, lips pursed. Rested his chin on his hand, rubbing his mouth with his fingers. Thoughtful. “I been thinking,” He said, slowly; as if he did anything else, spending all his time thinking and dreaming and keeping them safe as he did, as if Arthur didn't know the bags under Dutch’s eyes, dark as bruises, the wrinkles carved deep around his mouth; at the end of his rope, dangling dangerously from the edge of a chair as a backwater town’s sheriff got ready to kick it from underneath him, but still looking out for them all. Working on the best way to buy the little plot of land waiting for money to change hands. “‘Bout what that O’Driscoll said, the one at the Adler Ranch. Might be a good score, going after that train - Colm’s information was always good, and we’ll need the money to get back on our feet after all this.”

Arthur grimaced. A train was always risky.

“You don’t agree,” Said Dutch, and it wasn’t a question and there wasn’t disbelief in his face when he glanced at Arthur. He looked older, with the firelight cast over his face like that - the way he never had before, even when he plucked silver hairs from his temple and complained about his knee busted years ago playing up, about aches and pains and sitting up in bed slow from stiffness. Like someone who’d have settled down on a ranch out West raising cattle or horses, if the ferry job had gone to plan.

“It’s a risk, Dutch,” Arthur said. Not just because it’d be full of hired guns and trains were a pain in the ass to stop anyway, and Arthur didn’t trust the O’Driscolls as far as he could spit. There was never a guarantee the take would be worth the risk. “And I ain’t so sure it’s worth chasing up on when we’re on the down and out.”

“We could do it, son.”

Arthur hooked his thumbs on his belt, sighed into the silence Dutch left between them. “We could,” He agreed. “The question ain’t if we _could_ , it’s if we _should_ , an’ I reckon you’re only talking to me ‘bout it ‘cause you need me to help you talk Hosea into it, and I ain’t so sure I want to.”

Dutch turned back to the fire. Arthur sighed again. “I know we need money,” He said, gently. “An’ when we get down from this shithole we’ll get it, always have before. I’ll work myself to the bone to get that money, Dutch - you know I will - an’ I’ll make sure the rest of us do too. I’ll rob all the stagecoaches we need to, if I gotta, but I ain’t gonna go after this train just on some O’Driscoll lackey’s tip off I beat outta him. Robbin’ trains has turned bad on better information.”

And Dutch- Dutch slumped into the chair, shoulders falling loose, eyes closed. Defeated. “Alright, son,” He sighed. “Alright. You’re right.” He huffed a laugh, said, “Guess I didn’t raise no fool after all,” and there was a smile in the quirk of his lips, enough that Arthur let himself relax, let himself smile a little back. He’d never liked talking back, but it was either him or John on Hosea’s side and God only knew John was worse than useless for that.

Dutch's smile faded, and he pressed his mouth thin, looked back to the fire; bowed under Annabelle’s weight where he kept her with him, even after all this time. He sighed, as Arthur turned to the door. “Arthur?”

He waited.

“You keep yourself safe, son,” Dutch murmured, and a shadow ran dark beneath his voice. Old fear. “When you go out again, on them trips out you do. Just… stay safe.”

“‘Course, Dutch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold the plot threads I weave so cack-handedly through my writing.
> 
> I'm going to go a bit more into it later, but very quickly the way werewolves and werebears (and werecats, but they probably won't show up) are seen by the world is a bit of a mixed bag - as humans, legally they're offered the same protection as everyone else, which is to say it's murder when they're killed. As animals, though, it's fair game, and there's a big business for trophies. The O'Driscolls in particular make a lot of money selling skins and heads to taxidermists.


	3. Chapter 3

There was a taste of warmth on the wind as Arthur went about his chores over the next week, chopping firewood and shovelling pathways through the snow and slipping into wolf’s skin to patrol the little valley Colter was nestled in. Following footsteps scrabbling up the hills, the deep trails old, softened at their edges; sniffing the air, but any scent left behind had been scoured away.

(It was probably just Lenny - he tended to wander, lost in his head as he whiled away the hours thinking deep the way Hosea and Dutch tended to do.)

He went out hunting, too - mostly just to enjoy the rare respite of the nearest town being half a state away. Their work usually kept them in the borderlands between civilisation and the true wild, instead of out West where the law hadn’t dug their claws in yet, and Arthur didn’t usually mind so much - there was always time to himself, roaming across the badlands and plains with his horse the only soul for miles - but it was nice, not to have to be careful for once, slinking through the shadows of some backwoods town in case the cry of “ _Wolf!_ ” rang out and a bullet splashed his brains across the dust. He could stalk along the trails bold as his true-wolf cousins howling deeper in the mountains, stand up on his two feet and poke through a small lakeside hut as much as he liked, pawing through drawers and cupboards.

And there was food, steady enough in coming; deer were making their way back up from the lowlands, cropping the shoots poking through the snow where it had been melted thinnest, and birds were migrating home. He found a moose, too - a bull as big and wide as a house - but Arthur let him be; couldn’t do much for the gang if a bull moose bashed his brains out, after all. But he caught a goose by the small lake with the hut at its edge as it stumbled over the ice, as confused as everyone else by the stubborn winter, and a muskie in lake Isabella too close to the water’s surface where the ice had broken up.

Things were good, good enough he’d taken the Adler’s Walker out for a ride once or twice, too, to try and get themselves used to one another a bit more. Train him out of some of his skittishness around werewolves, though Arthur wasn’t too sure how well that was going to go; the bay was getting better at not flinching or spooking with Arthur, but he seemed a nervous beast already and a wolf in the skin of a man wasn’t exactly going to inspire much confidence. Not like his proud Boadecia, that strong and solid shire too placid and gentle to care that wolves slept around her feet, or Bill bear-shaped lumbering past the pasture, scratching his haunches on the hitching posts. His big, bold lady, stolen from a stagecoach too beat up to sell, who lay down on the grass with Arthur a wolf against her belly, fearlessly stole his hat from his head and pranced in big, heavy stomps with her prize.

His huffed laugh at himself curled as a puff of mist and smoke from his mouth, and he shook his head at that twinge of hurt in his heart. Mourning for a horse; he’d killed members of the gang and felt less awful, though maybe that was because they’d betrayed them first.

Arthur looked up at the clouded sky, hat tipped back from his face. Snow fell softly, soft enough Abigail had let Jack play outside, and he’d taken to building a snowman, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he carefully patted the base into shape. He beamed proudly when he was done. “Lookin’ good, Jack!” Arthur called, pride a low rumble deep in his throat, and he leaned against the wall of Hosea’s house to keep watch, repeater hanging loose at his side. “You got a scarf ready for ‘im?”

Jack nodded, hard enough his hat threatened to fall off. “Uh huh,” He said; patted the second wool scarf around his neck, ratty and old, the green faded, and went back to work.

“He’s growin’ up fast, that one,” Said Hosea, mouth curled with pride as he crunched through the snow, blowing on his gloved hands. All pale skin and pale hair and dark eyes deep in his face that flashed reddish in the dark, skinny and wiry and stiff-boned - it would be good to get him back into the warmth and easy living of the south, so the lines deep around his eyes and mouth didn’t have have to be shadowed quite so dark, carved deeper with worry. “Seems just yesterday we were all carrying him around with us to let Abigail catch a break, and now look at him. But then-” He stopped beside Arthur, watching over Jack with him, “-I remember when you were young, too.”

There was an edge to Hosea’s smile, lips hiding the wolf’s teeth underneath; a laugh in the gleam of his dark eyes, soft as the collar of his coat turned up against the cold. Arthur barked a short laugh of his own. “Yeah, an’ you remember when folks painted on cave walls. You’re gettin’ maudlin’.”

Hosea tipped his head, shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “Maybe,” He allowed, chuckling. “You were a goddamn terror, though. Not like our little Jack. Stickiest fingers I ever saw - couldn’t even take you to a general store without you smuggling half their stock back home under your shirt!” He laughed at Arthur’s grumble, knocked his elbow against his. “And you hated coming into town with us; always haring off into the wilds quick as a blink. And _clothes_! God, when you started shooting up like a weed you grew out of your shirts as soon as we bought them! You remember? Spent a whole summer barefoot and runnin’ wild and half-naked. Got into scraps just ‘cause a fella looked mean at his horse.”

“He was gonna hit him for not winnin’ that race an’ you know it.”

“And you knocked his teeth out,” Said Hosea placidly, “And Silver Dollar’s been a hell of a horse ever since.”

Jack rolled around the snowman’s chest, stopping now and then to check the size, head tilted. Bill helped him lift it up onto the base he’d set down when he declared it was perfect. Such a little scrap of a thing, Jack was; too little - too gentle - for their way of life, and for a dad who wanted nothing to do with him and a mother who loved him fierce as a she-cat but didn’t know anything about raising a child except that she wanted him safe and happy, and a gang of outlaws and cursed beasts who knew even less.

Much too small, under the reaching shadows of the Grizzly mountains and the clouds hanging heavy around their peaks with the snow drifting gently down the valley.

But he seemed happy, all cold-red cheeks and wide smiles that hid his teeth as he started making a head for his snowman. Utterly fearless of them all, even when Abigail had taught him to walk by getting him to totter from her arms to the wolves resting by the fire, Arthur and his broad skull and mouth full of teeth and silver-muzzled Hosea who held court at Dutch's side; let him play with Sean who darted and dashed, snapped at coat sleeves, red as a streak of blood. Or maybe because of it - they’d all have sooner turned their teeth on themselves than let Jack come to harm, after all - they were dogs at heart.

Arthur let the house take a little more of his weight, watched over the camp with Hosea by his side. The wall creaked under his weight, but held, and in his makeshift kitchen Pearson hacked at the second doe he and Charles had brought home, cutting out a rack of ribs for the stewpot, while Uncle sat on the bench behind him and blathered on about nothing and everything all at once. Javier circled the camp, patrolling with Micah. Miss Grimshaw orchestrated packing up, stringent and harsh and softer with Mrs Adler as she said in which wagon to put the crates; she smacked Dutch’s arm for taking a moment to talk to Lenny instead of putting his things on the wagon, yanked the bow Charles was waxing from his hands and pushed him into shovelling free the wagons’ wheels.

Only a few days until they were free of Colter and its clinging, hungry winter. And then it was back to work, bank jobs and stagecoaches and picking pockets for a handful of change and a watch, following the maps he found that sometimes paid off but usually didn’t, and stumbling over old, forgotten caches where people kept their handfuls of treasure. Making again all the money they’d had to leave behind in Blackwater.

Hosea’s voice was old when he said, “How much things have changed.”

Arthur grunted. He didn’t know if he was agreeing or dismissing or asking, or just making a noise to fill the space Hosea’s words left behind, but Hosea nodded as if he did, and that was all that mattered. Hosea was always good at knowing the inside of Arthur’s head, picking apart the scribblings in his journal to the truth beneath.

“You know,” Hosea said, and they watched Dutch swan between the wagons, all sweeping gestures and loud voice booming across the snow. Making Miss Grimshaw laugh when he caught her by the hand and pulled her close for a dance, humming some fancy song he liked to play on his record player as he spun her laughing through camp. “You know, it’s changed since those days. When it was just me and him, and our wives and our two unruly sons. I find myself wondering, sometimes; if it’s good things have changed. Dutch seems happy, and I suppose I am too, but… Well, it’s different to how it was, and Dutch is getting… _reckless_ in his old age.”

“Dutch’s always been reckless,” Arthur said. “Ain’t that what you always say? He’s always dreamed too big for his boots. Built a whole family out of some angry, lonely old souls and a whole lotta faith.”

Hosea’s mouth curled. “Arthur,” He crooned, smiling, “That was almost poetic of you.” But he sighed soon enough, amusement bleeding out. “But yes,” He said, and his eyes lingered on Dutch spinning between the wagons. “Dutch’s always dreamed big. Maybe the problem isn’t that he’s dreaming too big, it’s that the world has been getting smaller while we weren’t looking. Our time’s almost done - not a lot of space left for outcasts and vagrants and outlaws.” He smiled, soft. "But Dutch'll see us through," Hosea said. "His dreams haven't failed us yet."

Jack finished up his snowman, and Dutch dropped into a bow deep enough to make Miss Grimshaw laugh at him. His dark eyes twinkled brightly when he turned to Hosea, arms held wide, grinning mouth softened so his lips hid his teeth. “Hosea!” He called, little crows’ feet crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “What’s an old dog like you doin’ out, hmm?”

“This old dog,” Hosea said, “Needed a walk. And he heard some old madman bothering poor Miss Grimshaw while she’s tryin’ to get us packed up and moving from these godforsaken mountains, so maybe we both ought to get inside.”

“Well then,” Said Dutch, dropping into another bow, arm swept to the side and hand held out like Hosea was some flesh and blood princess, and not an old wolf grizzled white who coughed a laugh for his gallantry. “May I?”

Hosea rolled his eyes, but there was a pleased gleam in his eyes when he let Dutch take his hand, when Dutch offered his arm and he held it, tucked close as they walked back into their shared house. Arthur settled a little more comfortably against the wall while Abigail helped Jack decorate his snowman, and Javier whistled a tune and Pearson made stew while Miss Grimshaw orchestrated the packing, and Micah circled the camp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not apologising for where I'm taking Dutch in this fic. I 100% believe canon is Micah's fault, and I've got proof to back me up, so expect a lot more of the dads™ being disgustingly loving and cute while I butcher the game to get the gang a home.
> 
> Also, I've just realised that I completely forgot about Molly, so assume she never joined the gang and is currently enjoying life as a moderately renowned supporting actress in theatre.


	4. Chapter 4

“Y-y’know Colm ain’t gonna be too happy about this!” Croaked the O’Driscoll, bouncing on the back of Arthur’s bay. “I tend the horses, see - tha’s all. I-I take care of ‘em, and there ain’t n’no one else gonna look after ‘em, s-so he’ll need me back! He won’t look too kindly on you for this; for takin’-takin’ his stablehand away from him.”

He was a skinny, rabbity little thing, the O’Driscoll. Sweating fear and made up of skin and bones and not much in between, and stretched out too long into some gangly, sad sort of beast - his dark hair and scraggly beard all matted and greasy, slicked flat against his skull, heart hammering hard against the inside of his ribs, loud from the saddle even above the thudding of hooves against frozen ground. Arthur wrinkled his nose - his stinking of fear and terror clung sour and cloying in the back of his throat. He smelled like straw dust, too; like hay and horses and horse muck.

So. Not lying, or else he either had less of a sense of smell than even normal folk or he hated baths even more than John did. But he weren’t telling the truth, neither - Colm never cared for his men, except when Dutch made it a point to push them out of land the gang was passing through and Colm wanted the excuse to push back. There wasn’t going to be a rescue, and the boy must have known it, but he was posturing, fluffed out like a cat to make himself look big and important, like a businessman in his fancy suit with his fancy shoes and fancy suitcase, blustering about his place in the company as if it was frightening when he was being robbed blind.

A kicked dog of bird bones and no spine cringing into himself, the boy said, “I wasn’t with ‘em long, mister - I swear it! I-I don’t even like them boys, they _made_ me run with ‘em! I’ll tell you everythin’ you wanna know if you let me go - honest!”

Arthur laughed. “Oh, you’ll tell us what we wanna know,” He agreed. “But I ain’t so sure if my idea of what we wanna know is the same as yours. You gonna tell us the truth, O’Driscoll?” Arthur asked. “Or are you gonna tell us what you think we want to hear ‘cause you think we’ll let you go in thanks like we’re as thick as shit as the rest of them O’Driscoll’s?”

The O’Driscoll swallowed. “ _Everythin’_ ,” He promised.

“Well, we’ll see ‘bout that, won’t we?” Arthur said amiably, and rolled loose his shoulder. Push come to shove he could always rough the boy up a bit, give him a shake and see what came tumbling loose.

The O’Driscoll started babbling, then; everything and anything off the top of his head that he thought Arthur could possibly want, from patrols to where the camp camp coffers might be to when Colm had his morning shit, and then to begging and pleading and murmuring, secretively, that Arthur was a good man, and the boy wouldn’t be no trouble if Arthur let him go, he swore it on his life; he’d disappear if Arthur just please, _please_ let him go.

Arthur ignored him; he’d worked enough bounties and brought enough of them in alive to know that a man hogtied and bouncing on the back of a horse tried anything at hand to try to shovel his way out of the shit he found himself neck deep in, from bribes to pleas to threats to simple insults. The boy had tried most of it already, wobbling between the half-threats of more O’Driscolls and beggin’ and whimpering and licking teeth, tail tucked tight between his legs, as if Arthur’d pity him. Hadn’t tried insulting him though, so he mighta had no spine but he had some sense knocking around between his ears.

They followed the trail up from Lake Isabella, carved out beside the stream, and the clear sky brightened quietly with the rising sun, shadows cast dark through the valley. A few rams butted heads below a small copse of trees on the other bank, kicking up snow and digging deep furrows as the hollow _crack_ of their knocking horns echoed off the mountain slopes.

The O’Driscoll fell quiet, at last, and Arthur eased back in the saddle; he’d kicked up a hell of a fuss ever since Arthur tracked him through the night, coming across his trail in the snow where it circled the camp too purposeful to be Lenny’s wandering and too uncertain to be another patrol. The bay’d been good, coming when Arthur whistled for him, and he’d been even better haring across the snow closer and closer, close enough Arthur could throw his lasso and yank the boy from his horse. He’d kicked and bleated when Arthur got his hands and feet tied, and hadn’t shut up since.

He stroked a hand down the bay’s strong neck as they loped on through the watery, pinkish dawn, and the horse burred, snorting at the snow up to his knees. Ears pinned back, head high and scenting the wind for a threat miles and miles away. “Yeah,” Arthur agreed softly, too soft for the O’Driscoll to hear, for his voice to scrape quite so harsh out of his throat, “Awful place, ain’t it? The Grizzlies. We’ll be gone from here soon enough, though; don’tchu worry. Sell you to someone who ain’t gonna make you spook, hmm?”

Someone without a wolf’s whiteless eyes and a wolf’s teeth and a wolf’s voice that half-mumbled gruff and guttural. Someone decent, who’d make a better owner than Arthur could when the bay’d startle just at Arthur on the other end of Colter. But that was no fault of his, and Arthur gave him another pat; it was Arthur’s fault, for whistling for his horse and still expecting for it to be Bodeceia come charging to his side.

The O’Driscoll squirmed. “You… y-you’re a wolf, ain’t you mister?” Said the O’Driscoll. There wasn’t any real question about it - there was no hiding it - but the boy somehow made it one, and didn’t wait for an answer. “Y-you ain’t gonna eat me mister?” He asked, and he flinched hard when Arthur glanced back at him. “I-I-I really… I mean-”

“Eat you?” Said Arthur, and turned his bay so they splashed through the stream. The O’Driscoll spluttered and whinged; Colter loomed out of the dark. “Naw, I ain’t gonna eat you. No meat on them bones of yours worth the time.”

“Phew.”

“Now _toothpicks_ ,” Arthur said, “I could do wi’ them, so you best shut up soon O’Driscoll.”

He turned his bay down the path to Colter while the O’Driscoll whinged and whimpered ‘bout how he was only a stablehand, he wasn’t even taken on jobs, he’d never even wanted to run with Colm in the first place, and on and on and on, and Arthur lifted his head, turned his ear to Colter; there was an awful lotta noise for when the sun wasn’t even up properly, shouting gone high and loud with panic, worry murmured softly.

Too far for the words to carry well, but Arthur swallowed anxiety hard in his throat and kept his bay steady, even when he tried to jump into an anxious canter. The snow outside Colter’s broken fences was smooth and glittering, soft and dense - smoke drifted from Colter’s chimneys, pale against the sky; there was no stink of blood or sting of gunpowder. No bodies or bullets scattered in the snow, or shack walls shattered.

There was only Dutch and Hosea in the middle of the camp, heads bent together, hands clasped; Charles with Taima by the hitching posts, foot in Taima’s stirrup, half into the saddle - Bill and Javier and Lenny, Karen and Mary Beth and Miss Grimshaw all crowding at the edges as they watched Hosea hold Dutch’s wrist, his elbow; too close to pretend that he couldn’t hear Hosea’s promises and comforts.

“Our boy is _fine_ ,” Hosea said, the faintest tremor in his murmured voice, steel in his dark eyes. “You know Arthur, he’ll be back soon enough - probably just hunting, you know how he is. He’ll be back, you know he will - he’s too clever for the O’Driscolls. They’re idiots - how the hell’re they gonna catch him?” He rubbed his thumbs over Dutch’s heavy coat, pressed his temple to Dutch’s. “He’s alright,” Hosea murmured, “Arthur is our tough sonuvabitch, an’ if he ain’t fine after all we’ll get him back safe, you know we will. I’ll eat my hat if we don’t.”

Arthur cleared his throat; Dutch’s head snapped up, eyes going wide while Arthur dismounted. “ _Arthur_ ,” He breathed, said, “ _Christ_ , son!” Fierce and frightened and relieved all at once. Clapped a hand to Arthur’s shoulder, eyes closed, head bowed a moment.

Arthur tipped his head to the O’Driscoll squirming on the bay’s back, and Dutch took a breath deep into his lungs, squared his shoulders, and settled back on his heels. “Caught an O’Driscoll sniffing around,” Arthur said, and there was something like an apology for running off the way he had in the scratch of his voice, guilt squirming tight around his heart. He hadn’t meant to worry. Dutch nodded, squeezed his shoulder, and all was forgiven. “Saw tracks that weren’t supposed to be there, didn’t look like no animal’s so I followed a while. Caught a live one for you.”

Dutch clapped his hands together, grinning wide to show teeth, eyes narrowing like a wolf’s - Arthur ducked his head, reflexive; the O’Driscoll whimpered. “Did you now?” Dutch said, low and pleased. “Well let’s have a look at him, then.”

“I-I don’t know nothing, mister, sir - r-really I don’t!” Said the O’Driscoll, kicking as Arthur hauled him from the bay’s back and tossed him, kneeling, into the snow. “ _Ow_!” He complained, and shrank under Dutch’s broad shadow gone wider with all his boys crowding around to see, Lenny and Javier and Bill, Micah shoving his way into the circle. Hosea by Dutch’s side, hand in the crook of his elbow; Charles by Arthur’s. “I was jus’ t-the stablehand, I swear it, I-I didn’ know who you _was_! A-an’ I ain’t told Colm nothin’ bout you, I jus’ told him you were trav’lers, not nothin’ worth stealing or goin’ spare for ‘em. H-honest, I was jus’ a bootboy, dunno why he sen’ me out, _honest_ s-sir!”

Micah bared his yellowed teeth, barked a scoff and growled under his breath, stiff-legged and shoulders up like he was raising hackles. Like the O’Driscoll was worth posturing at. “Just kill him, he ain’t worth the time. We got bigger things to worry ‘bout.”

“He might be useful,” Charles said mildly, and Micah’s lip curled.

Arthur looked to Dutch - there was a glitter in his eyes as he looked at the O’Driscoll, that old and familiar instinct for good souls in bad places sparking to life again, a thoughtful twist to his mouth like he was rolling around a drop of whiskey, wondering if it was a good bottle worth keeping or a rotgut best poured on the ground.

He raised his chin, and looked to Javier and Bill. “Take our new friend to the stable,” He said. “Make him _comfortable_ \- water twice a day, no food.” The O’Driscoll flinched when Javier and Bill hauled him up under the arms, kicking and cringing like a beaten dog, like he’d skitter into the nearest hole like a rat given half the chance, but he stilled like any other man under the weight of Dutch’s gaze when he leaned towards him. “We got a sayin’ here, friend; we shoot folk as need shootin’, rob ‘em as need robbing, and feed ‘em as need feedin’. Maybe in a few weeks we’ll see what you need.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got nothing to say about this chapter, really - not the best I've done, but not the worst, and there's Kieran, Arthur being Arthur, and dads. I was going to add the attack on the O'Driscoll camp, but I decided not to; it didn't really fit with where this fic is going, and I like it better without.


	5. Chapter 5

They left the Grizzlies behind under the spring sun and the pine boughs unbending with the melting of their snow, and with an O’Driscoll tied up in the back of a wagon. Karen and Tilly kept an eye on him; they’d have left him with Mrs Adler, but she’d tried to yank Arthur’s hunting knife from his belt and gut the boy once already, and since Dutch had promised there’d be none of that against him again to get him to quiet down from his shivery wailing they’d all had to keep to it, so miss Grimshaw’d kept them separate since.

The going was… tough. Steady, sure, but while spring let them finally start moving it brought its own problems for vagrants like them; while the ice and snow on the roads were melting, it left behind mud that was almost as slippery, and the wagons had to crawl slowly along the winding, narrow paths. What could have been a days’ hard travel in the dawning summer, with the ground firm underfoot, was going to be twice that, and Dutch kept Bill as a bear lumbering on behind the wagons to keep watch, grunting and growling to himself and the mud his wide paws sank deep into, so they had to go slower still for him to keep pace.

Arthur rode point far enough ahead he’d need to shout for Dutch to hear, with Dutch and Hosea driving the wagon at the head of their caravan, and slowly through the pale morning and bright noon they reached Cattail Pond and the old, dense forests of West Elizabeth. The echoing silence of the mountains gave way to birds and beasts and the distant bugle of elk, and Arthur turned his head to listen as often as his bay turned his ears.

He was nervous, the bay - jumping and flinching and trying to freeze in place at every creak and snap of the gently swaying pines, but Arthur kept him steady, spurring him on with gentle taps of his heels. He was a good horse, on the whole, and Arthur patted his broad neck when he tried to stop again. “Ain’t nothing to worry ‘bout, fool,” He murmured softly, spurring him back into a trot. The only grizzly for miles was Bill suffering the girls' teasing, the nearest wolf the one on the bay's back. “Y’alright, boy. You’re okay.”

The bay snorted, almost derisive, and Arthur supposed he couldn’t blame him for that when Micah came trotting up on Baylock - he’d half a mind to snort almost derisive too, if Micah weren’t riding shoulder-to-shoulder beside him already, light catching on his yellowish wolf's teeth as he grinned, whiteless wolf's eyes flashing flat and cold.

“ _Cowpoke_ ,” He rumbled, a vague imitation of Arthur’s fool drawl he’d never quite been able to lose, and he barked a laugh. “You getting so lonesome out front you’re talking to that thing?”

“Ain’t so lonesome,” Arthur said mildly, and kept patting the bay. “We been chatting up a storm here; he’s a mighty fine conversationalist, ain’t you?” He settled back in the saddle, rolling loose his shoulders. “Real smart, too - damn sight smarter’n you, I reckon.”

Baylock tossed his head, reaching out to nip and prancing away when the bay folded his ears back, lips curling; Arthur gently pressed his leg against his bay’s flank, and the bay yielded, stepping over to the other side of the path. Micah’s head tilted. “Oh, I'm hurt!” He said, hand pressed flat to his chest. “And here I thought we was gettin’ on so _well_ , brother!”

Words weighed heavy in Arthur’s mouth, most of which miss Grimshaw would cuff him for using, and he swallowed the hard lump of them lodged behind his teeth and said, “You ain’t no brother of mine.”

Micah tapped his spurs against Baylock’s flank, and he came close again, thick moustache twisted into a grin. Arthur’s shoulders drew tight, jaw clenched tighter as he curled his lip; a warning, when he was without the hackles to bristle. Micah only laughed. “Oh sure,” He agreed. “‘Course I ain’t no brother of yours, no-" He raised his arms, high and grand, "- the great and mighty Arthur Morgan don’t need a brother!" He barked another laugh, leaned close like he was murmuring secrets. "A real _lone wolf_ that Arthur Morgan, riding out all on his lonesome, working jobs with the rest of us only when it suits him.”

Arthur snorted, a growl low in his chest that made his bay start and flinch.

A lone werewolf didn't live lone long, or else he didn't live long at all. There was a reason, after all, Arthur had stayed with his father who had stayed with his mother, hiding teeth behind lips and eyes behind hats and claws behind gloves, heads bent low and meek; even when behind closed doors they bit and tore each other bloody, and it would have been better for them all if Arthur's mother had taken him and struck out on their own. There was a reason, when his father hanged to death on a sheriff's noose for a theft that didn't need hanging, that Arthur followed close at Dutch and Hosea's heels. Why so many other beasts came to Dutch's side, Hosea and Bill and Sean, and Jenny and Annabelle and Mac and Davey, and other wolves dead or living safe in homes far from people after Dutch gave them the chance to.

It was the lone wolves who _did_ live long that worried Arthur, and between the two of them Micah was that lone wolf. Micah who was the carrion-eater, the hunger-lean poacher who snuck into hen-houses and cattle-corrals, the killer who skulked through city shadows and town graveyards, sneaking through open windows to kill sleeping men. The kind of wolf that first made men of the cloth step up to their pulpits and denounce the cousins of men and dogs, who then tried to burn the devils from their bones as if there was a beast's soul living beside theirs that could be exorcised. The kind of wolf not suited to living with others, because he bit and pulled against the traces put on him, snapped at orders and thought Arthur's space just behind Hosea could be won.

Micah grinned wider, bared wolf’s teeth jagged in his mouth, pale eyes locked on Arthur’s. “You tired, cowpoke?” He asked softly, and Arthur snarled at that snake-hiss scrape in his throat, his hat brim’s shadow cast dark over his eyes. “You tired of workin’ on your own like that all the time?” He licked his teeth, pale hair hanging lank and greasy, a rattle in his throat like an answering growl. Knuckles white with the tightness of his grip, and Baylock tugged against his reins pulled too taut. “You been working _real_ hard up in that snow. Ain’t been easy for none of us, but none of the rest of us been out since first light makin’ sure we ain’t gonna make it easy for the law. Oughta let a brother help, you know, else you might find you can’t work no more.”

“That right?” Arthur said mildly, holding Micah’s gaze.

“Sure,” Said Micah, shifting in the saddle, head ducking low a moment before he tightened his jaw and straightened. “We _all_ get tired, brother - ain’t no shame in that. I seen folk drop dead ‘cause they worked too hard, seen folk-” He licked his lips, voice so low it hissed, “- seen ‘em keel over right where they stand.”

Arthur smoothed his hand over his bay’s neck. “That so?” He said. “You seen folk keel over jus’ like that? Ain’t nothing else to it?”

Micah spread his hands wide, reins looped around the saddle horn, head tilted with a smile. “Just like that.”

“So you ain’t stabbed the feller over a card game?” Arthur asked, bland as Pearson’s porridge. Micah’s growl rose into a snarl. “You ain’t shot him in the chest ‘cause he called you a dog-fucker over poker, or hit the working woman askin' kindly for payment for her services? You ain't grabbed a man by the throat 'cause you was sore you'd lost a fight?”

“ _Cowpoke_ ,” Micah said, almost outraged, as if Arthur hadn’t been there and _seen_ each one.

“I ain’t the one who brought the law down on us ‘cause he was too money-hungry to see the trap in the ‘unguarded’ ferry job,” Arthur said, “And escalated a situation that didn’t need no escalatin’ ‘till you got Dutch antsy enough to shoot a girl and got us all caught in the mess _you_ made.” He slowed his bay, dropping back to walk with Dutch and Hosea a while. Micah slowed Baylock right alongside him, so Arthur let his growl bleed into his throat and said, “Lenny’s waiting, _brother_ \- go scout the trail ahead, ‘fore we see who won’t be able to work no more.”

-:-

Dutch called for a changing of the guard not too long after Lenny and Micah were gone, and Javier took over Arthur's post on Boaz while Arthur took the afternoon to rest for the night’s watch. In the back of Hosea’s wagon, rattling down West Elizabeth’s eastern border, Arthur dreamed of wolves and hawks and whitetail doe, of a nervous horse and a lazy duck and a skinny, sad old cat; of dogs and their pup and a lynx grizzled old, of a lazy bear broad and proud and a bison prouder still, and of an elk stag crowned out of season heading the herd. They drifted pale as ghosts under a sun set just behind the mountains. He dreamed of cedars and pines scraping the sky and a homestead faint at the mountain’s foothills, of wide lakes and silvery rivers and broad, deep valleys.

He dreamed of a coyote, lean and hungry, howling through the dark.

-:-

They camped on a ridge not too far from Cumberland Falls, right by the side of the road bold as brass. “We aint nothing but a group of migrant workers coming south after our factory closed down,” Dutch said when he called them to a halt, the setting sun gold on his face, “And no man of the law’s gonna come out all this way for a group of migrant workers, so long as we -” He looked hard at Bill, “- _Keep our noses clean_.”

“My nose is _always_ clean,” Bill groused to Javier by the fire. “ _Other_ people get _me_ into trouble!”

Javier snorted, patted Bill’s thick arm. “Sure, amigo,” He said.

Arthur ignored them, and watched miss Grimshaw fussing over their overnight tents, making sure the pegs were hammered deep enough and the ropes secured and the poles weren’t going to fall with the first gust of wind stronger than a breeze. She fussed over John, too, where he was sat leaning against a wagon wheel poking at his stitches - slapping his hand away whenever he tried to pick at them. Made sure the girls would be safe in their tent in the middle of camp, and that Hosea hadn’t moved his bed from Dutch’s tent to the one he’d pitched.

But this camp was only for the night, so she ran out of things to do before the daylight to do them in and joined Dutch and Hosea instead, chuckling over bad whiskey and good stories from the days of old, when it was just her and the curious couple and their two unruly boys.

The fire crackled, pale woodsmoke curling high into the air; Pearson roasted turkey over the cooking fire, beating Bill away with his ladle, and Javier plucked the strings of his guitar in a slow, simple tune for the girls sat together beside him, swaying to the slow beat, and between them Uncle stumbled with a bottle dangling from his fingers, cheerfully calling out to them all. Charles kept watch at the edge of camp, leaned against a tree, long hair spilled dark down his back, shoulders loose. Dutch chuckled through the end of a story of some con he'd pulled long before he met Hosea.

Arthur spread his journal across his knees and sketched them, Hosea with his hand on Dutch’s knee and Dutch with his head thrown back in his great booming laugh, and miss Grimshaw grinning over the mouth of her whiskey bottle, eyes glittering with her story of taking Arthur to rob some well-to-do city folk living in the sticks and finding him stuck in the barn because she’d accidentally latched the barn doors behind her when she left him to change. Drew Dutch with the wrinkles starting to carve deep around his mouth, at the corners of his smiling eyes, and wolf-lean Hosea old and noble, eyes glowing through the dark. The crownless kings of outcasts and wild things; they'd have made the world something special for sure, if the world were smart enough to give them even half the chance.

 _We’re down from the mountains_ , Arthur wrote, _And heading to someplace near Valentine that Hosea says would be the perfect place to lie low a while. We’re all feeling better for having someplace warm and safe - it’s good to see Dutch laugh again, but then we ain’t had much to laugh about since the Blackwater mess._

_New Hanover is better than the Grizzlies, I suppose, but I think I’ll miss Colter, even with its drafty ruins and the snow piled up around our ears. Dutch has made the gang a place us beastfolk don’t have to be afraid, but the rest of the world ain’t so good as to do the same and I do not like being so close to civilization again. A hat can’t really hide a wolf’s eyes, unless that wolf is Hosea, and there are too many people who would want my head on their wall even without the number on it. I keep wondering if sooner or later my luck’ll run out and this time I’ll find myself in a hunter’s sights, and I’ll be the skinless bones some other wolf comes across._

_Hosea says it’s safe, and I have always trusted him, but I can’t help feeling a gun against the back of my head all the same._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not as smooth as I'd like, but fuck it. I didn't want to go straight from Colter to Horseshoe so I shoehorned this in. A few things needed setting up anyway, and good grief, I didn't expect Micah to be that much fun to write - don't think I got his voice quite right, but he's such a nasty, melodramatic bastard, I love it.
> 
> Edit: I am an absolute fool and forgot something in Arthur's dream.


	6. Chapter 6

Spring rolled out and the Heartlands had bloomed bright and pretty with it, rich and alive on the wind whenever Arthur sniffed the air, checking the weather. Tree boughs weighed heavy with new leaves, the land softening up again bringing with it easy hunting on turkeys and rabbits gone fat and lazy with returning food. Even the few passersby on the roads weren’t quite so mean under the spring sun as they would a winter one as they side-eyed the strange folk settling down just outside of Valentine.

It was a good place to rest a while, Arthur thought, taking a drag of his cigarette as his bay splashed through the river feeding Cumberland Falls. And yet somehow, even when he wasn’t actually with them, Sean caused trouble Arthur needed to drag him out of.

But for once it was _really_ not his fault this time. Blackwater was nasty business, and it wasn’t Sean’s usual kind of nasty business where he got howling drunk in the saloon and ended his night of drinking having started and ended three separate and bitter feuds, outraged the husbands of at least two wives, and set fire to the saloon because of a bottle of moonshine and a rogue cigarette. Bounty hunters could be mean sonsabitches - Arthur would know, he'd worked plenty of them - and they didn't let their cargo go easy; it was a hell of a lot of trouble getting folk out of their hands at the best of times, and if Trelawny was right and Blackwater still wasn't happy to let bygones be bygones then Sean's trouble was going to be even worse. But at least this time it was trouble Arthur could get him out of, though it still somehow seemed Sean’s fault that they only found out he was alive because of a bar brawl.

Arthur turned his bay south, patting his neck. “C’mon then feller,” He murmured softly. “Let’s get that goddamn fool outta Blackwater and get home, day ain’t done yet.”

West Elizabeth rustled softly with the wind rustling its forest’s leaves as Arthur picked his way down from Wallace Station, high in the hills above the Dakota glittering under the bright sun that rose through the morning, birdsong loud and cheerful as they darted overhead. He stopped now and then to spy them through his binoculars, sketching out bright songbirds and cardinals and drab little sparrows and waxwings. He had the time - there was no way in hell he was waltzing into a Blackwater probably still swarming with lawmen under the blazing sun.

The Dakota burbled as Arthur guided his bay along the trail on its western bank, the ridge towering high casting its cool shadow across the rushing water, and he breathed deep; pine needles and pine sap, the river carrying the smell of ice and cold from where winter still hadn’t quite loosened its grip, horse and human and gunpowder and metal-

He pulled on the reins, and obediently the bay stopped, ears turning on his head; two men on horseback stepped into the river at the bend just ahead on drab, unkempt horses - a dull, stocky grey and a dark Walker. Loud even over the rushing of the water, and turning to cross over to his side, rifles held loose in their hands, hats low over their eyes, dirty green jackets-

“Shit,” Arthur said, half to his bay, who raised his head with an anxious snort, ears folding back as he pawed the earth.

One of the two laughed loudly, and the other scowled darkly at the trees ahead. “Ye’re as dumb as a goddamn stump, Dennis!” Said the first, voice deep and booming, and he reached over to shove his friend. “Werewolves ain’t no man, same as wolves ain’t no dog. Sayin’ tha’ ‘s like sayin’ a housecat’s a tiger ‘cause they both got stripes!”

“Aye,” Said Dennis, sullenly. “Aye, you said tha’ before, you don’ need’tae go on ‘bout it.” He kicked his heels against his horse’s flank, and the silver horse tossed its head, ears pinned flat to its skull, and jumped forward into a trot, splashing through the water; Dennis’s friend laughed louder, and kept pace. “Dunno why you’re so keen on goin’ wolf hunting,” Said Dennis, pulling tighter his jacket. “We’re makin’ decent coin as is, an’ ma ain’t gon’ be pleased if you get yourself killed.”

“Aye,” The other O’Driscoll agreed, “But I’ll bet she’ll be mighty pleased wit’ me when I send her a stack o’ cash big as my fist for some mangy pelt!”

Dennis’s head hung low as they plodded through the river a little further, hair faintly curled hanging around his face; Arthur’s jaw tightened, teeth gritted as he pressed his palm to his holstered revolver but didn’t draw, not _yet_. Might be they’d pass right by. Might be.

“Do ye even know what ye’re lookin’ for?” Asked Dennis. “‘Cause it seems to me you’re the one as dumb as stumps, chasin’ after werewolfs like a goddamn eedjit.”

The brother scoffed. “‘Course I know!” He said hotly. “‘All werewolves,’” He intoned; grand and important, with some fancy English accent he couldn’t do all that well, “‘Are as big as horses and got the teeth to match, have claws like talons, and keep their wolf’s eyes and teeth when human.’ Ev’ryone knows tha’, Dennis. Right monsters they are; they ain’t even men at all, even when they’re tryin’ tae look like one.”

Arthur swallowed his heart beating hard in his throat, stroked his thumb across the back of his revolver, and watched the brother turn his head, glancing over the water, and jerk his horse to a stop. “Hey!” The brother called, lifting the muzzle of his rifle, and kicked his horse into bounding through the river; his eyes went wide when he skidded to a stop in front of Arthur, and his raised gun trembled a little in his hand. “ _Hey_ ,” He said, “D-don’t make a move, wolf - ain’t gonna tell you twice.”

The boy didn’t look much older than eighteen, nineteen - his beard just a few scraggly hairs clinging to his weak chin, his face still spotty, and he had that look about him that John had when his voice started breaking and he grew another foot and half in between the times Arthur looked at him, like he was less a man and more a gangly bundle of sticks in the shape of one. He shared Dennis’ greasy, curly hair and narrow, hollow-cheeked face, and he licked his lips, half panting with anxiety as he kept the gun trained on Arthur's head.

“‘Course,” Said Arthur agreeably, showing his empty palms as he smiled, lips over his teeth. “Don’t know too many beasts that’d move after gettin’ shot in the head, though - even us werewolves ain’t so strong as to shrug off summat like tha’.” Dennis rushed up to them, aimed his rifle; shoulder to shoulder with his brother and scowling as fierce as if the dirt track and West Elizabeth's gentle forests were a battlefield. Looked more pathetic than fierce, though, like a puppy showing teeth - Arthur clucked disapprovingly. “Ain’t no need for that, friend - I ain’t done nothing to neither of you.”

Dennis bared his gritted teeth, Arthur pressed his palm flat to his revolver; the rifle dropped, pointed at the ground, and Arthur pressed his hand to the rope coiled up and hung from the saddle instead. “Let’s jus’ _go_ , Martin,” Dennis hissed, holding tight to his brother's sleeve. “He’s righ’, we got no business doin’ this, Colm pays us plenty as is.”

“Oughta listen to your brother - smart lil’ feller you got there.”

The boy’s jaw clenched, but his finger didn’t settle around the trigger, and his aim wavered. Dropped a touch.

Arthur commanded, and his bay reared - striking out with his hooves at the O'Driscoll's Walker who jumped and kicked out in surprise, and Arthur threw out his lasso, caught Martin around his middle as he was unbalanced from his seat and _yanked_ him to the ground, arms pinned tight. Dennis shouted, something and nothing all at once and Arthur spurred his bay, got between the brothers’ horses and kicked him from the silver mare’s back, who shied and darted away, prancing anxiously through the trees when she stopped a ways away.

Dennis hit the ground hard, and scrabbled through the dirt for the guns as Arthur dismounted; he aimed his revolver square between Dennis’ eyes, the growl in his throat more warning than threat when the boy reached for the rifles abandoned on the muddy ground, and Dennis froze. “None o’ that, if you’d be so kind,” Arthur said.

They smelled like fear, the boys. Like terror, sour and cloying in the back of Arthur’s mouth and nose, heavy like a rabbit between his teeth, heartbeat fluttering against his tongue. Dennis whimpered like a pup, cringing small and hunched, didn’t look him in the eyes like everyone else who’d met the wrong end of Arthur’s temper and remembered that dogs didn’t like to be stared in the face. Seemed smaller under the looming shadow of the ridge fallen cool over them, the pines swaying gently with the spring breeze that carried the smell of more clear days to come, the threat of Arthur’s gun heavy with six bullets in a hand heavier with all the lives he’d taken before.

Colm didn’t care for his boys - he paid them well when he had them, hunted them ruthlessly when they broke rank and ran, but he didn’t miss them when they were killed. Didn’t try to find family and share the news, find the body and give it as decent a burial as they could. Didn’t have a list of names he carried to help learn from past mistakes, except maybe his brother's. It would be easy to get rid of them; and they’d talk about the werewolf they’d met on their failed hunt, and one of the others would recognise Arthur and report to Colm. Put the whole gang in danger after working so hard and so long to get out of it.

Their green O’Driscoll coats were torn, muddied brown, sleeves fraying at the hem that rested too high above their wrists. They weren’t much younger than Sean, locked up in Blackwater waiting for his brothers to save him as they always did.

Arthur threw both rifles into the river and hogtied Martin, though he kicked and hissed like a caught rat all the while, spitting curses; Dennis didn’t move from where he’d knelt in the middle of the road.

“Now listen,” Arthur told them, crouching down to meet their eyes, and Dennis stilled even more, barely breathing, “‘Cause I ain’t seen nothing so pathetic in all my life - if you’re gonna hunt werewolves, one: you don’t go ‘round spoutin’ off about it to the whole goddamn world. I heard you all the way on this side of the river, and I’d hear you further if it weren’t so loud. Two: other wolves ain’t gon’ be so nice as I am. We put up with a lotta nonsense, an’ most of the time we don’t got the patience for the likes of you, who’ve got balls bigger’n their brains and think we’re dumb as mushrooms. Either you quit this business while you’re ahead, or you’ll end up dead on a mountainside somewhere with your insides torn out.”

“Aye sir,” Said Dennis, nodding frantically, “Aye, I tol’ him it weren’t a business fer us, that ma’d be-”

Arthur growled a little, and the boy shut his mouth with a click. “I ain’t a kind man,” Arthur said, “But you caught me in a good mood, so I’m lettin’ the two of you go. I’m gonna take that silver mare over there and be on my way, and when I’m gone you two’re gonna take that Walker and be on _your_ way. Try anythin’ else on me an’ you’ll find my good mood disappears real fast, alright?”

The boy nodded again, so Arthur tipped his head to him, called over his bay, and whistled to the silver mare half hiding in the trees, head high and anxiously scenting the wind, the whites of her eyes bright against her coat. Dennis scuttled over to his brother face down in the dirt, tugging at the ropes - sneaking looks at Arthur now and then, like he expected Arthur to give up on the silver horse and go for his throat when he wasn’t looking.

She looked like too good a horse for that, though; dirty enough she was more tarnished grey than silver, but she was strong underneath her dirt-dull coat, dense and heavy with muscle. Standing her ground bold and proud as Arthur walked close, murmuring low and soothing, showing palms and stepping out of her blind spot. Stocky and sturdy, she was - black feathering on her legs and the black stripe dark and clear down her back, black eyes keen as she turned her head to watch him.

“Well,” Arthur told her, and the mare hopped up on her hind legs a moment, murmuring unhappily right back at him. “Look at’chu! Real pretty mustang you are.” She tossed her head, snorting, lips pulled back from her teeth. “Yeah, I know - I smell like wolf, don’t I? But I ain’t gon’ hurt you, see? He smiled at her, reached out, “How’s about you come with me, hmm? I’ll look after you good and proper.”

She sniffed Arthur’s outstretched palm, cautious-quick; sniffed his face, snorting into his jaw, his hair - knocking his hat off his head and startling the bay into prancing anxiously, but she only gently mouthed its brim before sniffing the knee of his dark jeans. Arthur came in close, patted her neck nice and slow, and she relaxed, butting close. He stroked her face, the white stripe bright down her nose from forehead to dark, velvety muzzle, a charming little patch of pink at its end. A good, proud horse, and Arthur vaguely wondered how the hell did the O’Driscolls get their hands on her? Maybe they didn’t know what kind of horse they’d grabbed, they rarely cared for the meat that carried them to jobs and it wouldn’t be the first time they’d stolen a good horse and left them to rot in menial work, or maybe they were just planning to fence her later.

It didn't matter - she was his now. Arthur swung himself up into her saddle, and she took his weight easy enough - obeyed even easier when Arthur tapped his heels to her side and she set off at a walk. They ambled along the road, his new mare and his old bay side-by-side on the narrow track, and he left the two fool boys behind to go their own way as he went south to rescue his own fool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rushed, awful chapter because I couldn't decide how I wanted to get Arthur his new horse. I've got about four different versions of this damn thing. I'm trying to flesh out the O'Driscolls a bit, too, so have some dumb baby ones.
> 
> Also, am I the only one who loves Red Dead's mustangs? The grullo dun is absolutely gorgeous.


	7. Chapter 7

Arthur swung ‘round to Strawberry a little after noon to leave his Walker in the stable’s care, and Charles looked up with a smile when he stopped at the edge of his little camp and dismounted, taking off the mustang’s bridle so she could graze. She seemed more interested in making friends with Taima, though - leaning forward to sniff her dark neck and sidling close - so Arthur let her be, and dropped down by the fire.

“Hey,” Charles said, and turned back to the new arrows in his hand, shaving away slivers of wood in long, slow curls. “Good journey?”

“Not so bad,” Arthur told him, and tipped the brim of his hat over his eyes against the setting sun, settled the rolled-up cuffs of his shirt more comfortably over his elbows and loosened the collar against the lingering desert heat.

The Walker was in good company at the stable, safe and fed until Arthur found someone decent to sell him to, and through the long, lonely hours it took until he was splashing across the montana river to enter a state that’d sooner see him shot dead than get Sean back he’d got to work on his new mustang.

He’d brushed away her old, dead-dull coat until she shone silver; picked out stones from her hooves and smoothed ointment over the small, shallow cuts the O’Driscoll’s spurs had left behind. Trained her a little, to come when called and to stand still as he mounted or dismounted, to run away when told. The small things that made a hard life a little easier, and that taught her to listen to him. She didn’t even seem too bothered by the wolf on her back, the flash of his sharp wolf’s teeth and whiteless wolf’s eyes.

She was no Bodeceia, the mustang - a little too proud, she wouldn’t be taught by a rider she didn’t know yet - but she was… something. Something just as special as her, or maybe not special _yet_ but certainly could be.

The little camp was safe on the ridge towering high over Blackwater, out of sight and out of the way, the smoke curling from the fire thin and wispy, and Arthur… relaxed, a little. Warmed his bones on Charles’ fire as the desert chill crept in with the gathering dark, watched Charles’ knife as he shaped his arrows, his human eyes squinting to see by the firelight Arthur didn’t need. Lulled by the easy motion of it, Charles’ hands steady and sure on the handle of his knife; broad thumb on the spine as he guided the stroke, stopping now and then to brush the shavings in his lap into the fire.

Arthur’s mustang burred softly; glowed under the purpling dusk sky, side by side with dark-spotted Taima. The fading light of the set sun burned on the edge of the world, pale across the Great Plains as it swept wide and endless, its grass swaying in the gentle breeze, the soft roar of the wind rustling Talltrees’ redwoods distant and muted. Blackwater’s lights glittered below the ridge they were camped on, bright and pretty; its streets still alive, the murmur of people dim as they all went to or stumbled drunkenly from the saloon and the half moon rose quietly over it, bluish behind pinkish clouds in the pinkish sky.

Still a town too small to be called true civilisation just yet, still far from the reaching hand of the law even with its men patrolling the streets below, though how long that would last Arthur didn’t know. The world was marching on, and there was no room in its future for such relics as outlaws and conmen.

There had never been room for werewolves; even since the days of viking berserkers, and cursed wolves and bears ran side by side with men as they raided English shores, there hadn’t been room in the civilised world for them.

Arthur shook loose the thoughts from his head - there wasn’t room to think of that, between the gentle warmth of the fire and Charles’ gentler eyes on his face when Charles said, “New horse?”

Arthur settled back, resting his elbow on his raised knee, his other foot scuffing through the dust. “Yeah,” He said, scratching the fur-soft scruff of his jaw, through his hair to the back of his head, under his hat - they were getting long, thought Arthur vaguely, his hair and his stubble both. “Met some O’Driscolls on the way here, on their way to hunt werewolves.” Charles’ eyes went wide, whites flashing - knuckles white around the hilt of his knife. “Ain’t no big deal,” Arthur hurried. “They was jus’ a couple'a kids, really - didn’t know nothing ‘bout it, didn’t even seem that serious ‘bout it neither. They was just dumb as hell, lookin’ for some extra cash to send home.”

Charles settled back, broad shoulders slumping a little. “Why werewolves, though?” Charles asked, and there was something low in his voice that Arthur couldn’t quite catch, couldn’t quite understand. “There’s easier prey. Other shapeshifters.”

“Easier for sure,” Arthur agreed. “But easier don’t always put food on the table.”

Out West someplace the sun was setting on an oak with the bones of a wolf and woman all at once beneath its roots, mixed and mangled together; fragile in Annabelle’s skin as Dutch laid her to rest and carried the stain of her blood on his hands ever since. Someplace northeast in seperate and unmarked graves were the bones of a man and woman with wolf’s teeth in their skulls, killed by the law and who’d been known as Morgans. In fancy hotels taxidermy bears with narrow feet and long toes on their forepaws and blunt snouts in their faces reared and roared from their stand.

Their deaths paid well, somewhere for someone. Maybe that person needed the money to make ends meet, see himself to the end of the week at least; Arthur wouldn’t begrudge that. He’d killed people to keep his family safe and fed, and for less noble ends too.

“Werewolves are common,” Arthur said. “That’s all there is to it, really. We’re common as dogs, and maybe we don’t pay so well as bears or cats but we ain’t so hard to hunt, neither. Hell, any common bullet can put us down - don’t need no silver, a shot to the head kills us as easy as it does anything else.” Charles’ mouth twisted, brows low over his eyes; Arthur tried a smile. “Reckon you’d be good at it,” He said. “Hell, I reckon Dutch won’t mind none if you killed Bill; get yourself a rifle with a decent scope and you won’t need to slum it with us no more.”

“Maybe,” Charles allowed, mouth softening. “But maybe I like you too much for that.”

Arthur huffed a laugh. “No accounting for taste,” He said, and looked over at the cliff edge behind them with a frown. “Javier ain’t here yet?”

“Gone to get water from the river,” Charles said. “Clean up a little from the ride here. We saw a few lawmen on the roads so he took Boaz with him just in case. Shouldn’t be too long getting back, though, if you’re worried.”

“Ain’t worried,” Arthur said. “Javier’s a good shot, and I trust him a hell of a lot more’n I’d trust Bill.”

“Or Micah.”

The sun finished disappearing below the horizon, though the sky still glowed faintly with its light, and Arthur shuddered just obviously enough to make Charles laugh. “Christ,” He said, “Don’t remind me. Dunno how I ever thought Sean was the worst goddamn idiot Dutch’d pick up I’ll never know - and Dutch’s picked up a lot of idiots over the years, including me.”

Charles set his arrows aside, and pulled out feathers for fletching. “You’re not an idiot,” He said, and Arthur didn’t really have anything to say about that - Charles was new in the gang, they didn’t really know each other all that well yet - so he let the silence hold, listening to Charles fletching his arrows and the crackle of the campfire and the whisper of the wind through the swaying grass.

-:-

Trelawny stepped out of the dark just before dawn, a shadow against the pale sky, making Javier curse where he kept watch by the tent. Didn’t look much like Trelawny for a few moments, as he ambled loose-limbed across the spiky grass, workman’s clothes stained and torn, the proud curl of his moustache roughed up into a thick bristle below his eagle-sharp nose. Didn’t look much like anyone at all, but then he was a magician, wasn’t he? Sleight of hand as easy as breathing, illusions as easy as changing hats; conjuring ravens from his shirt sleeves and rabbits from a box, turning himself into the pauper then the prince then back again just on a whim.

But then his twinkling black eyes creased at the corners, mouth curving into a smile as he rocked onto the balls of his feet and spread his arms wide, and he was Trelawny again, tall and spindly and out of place in the real world, like he’d just stepped out of a dime novel’s pages. “Arthur!” He called brightly, bounding over to the fire. The grass barely moved around his weight, but his hand was warm when he clasped Arthur’s and shook it hard enough it rattled Arthur’s teeth. “My boy, it is so _very good_ to see you properly! Dutch told me all about your little trip up to the mountains and I must say, you’re looking much recovered - absolutely splendid!”

“Couldn't look much worse," Arthur told him, and Trelawny laughed. "You found anything in Blackwater ‘bout Sean?”

Trelawny’s mouth hung open a moment, then shut with a click as he deflated, or as much as a man like Trelawny _could_ deflate. “Ah, well.” He licked his lip, rubbed his hand over his mouth, moustache smoothing back into its upswept curve, and sat down on the ground with them. “I found out a great deal, as it happens - but not all of it would be welcome, I fear.”

Javier snorted to himself, called, “Just get to the point, Trelawny - I have a feeling Sean doesn’t have the time for you to beat about the bush.”

“Yes, well,” Said Trelawny, rubbing the back of his neck, “That’s just the thing; he’s being moved upriver, to a federal prison in Montana.”

“Shit.”

“Indeed,” Said Trelawny grimly, nodding. “Ike Skelding’s boys - a few dozen of them at least, and not known to be workshy layabouts, either. I must say,” He added, “Whatever it is you’ve done you’ve angered the local law something awful - I couldn’t move for all the people putting up posters for you all. And it’s certainly a touch excessive, I say - such a big force of bounty hunters to move one man, and a man who isn’t even Dutch - but Sean _is_ a werewolf, I suppose, and known to run with other wolves. You don’t let your pack go easy.”

Arthur grimaced, pressed his hat lower on his head, brim tipped over his eyes; Sean was a young wolf - not that much older than Lenny, closer to a pup than a wolf, really - and there was only three from his pack coming to his rescue. Not good odds by any stretch, made worse by their one chance to get him back. They were ahead of the law by only a few months - they couldn’t afford to go rescuing people from a federal prison even at the best of times. Javier grimaced right alongside him - he knew that, too.

He glanced at Charles, met his eyes a moment. Either they got Sean back now, or they cut him loose. Charles' mouth pressed thin, held Arthur's gaze easy and steady. "We're not cutting him loose," He said. And he didn't say it like a question or a command, and it didn't land that way either.

He said it like it was true, as much a certainty as grass being green and water wet. Arthur sighed, got his feet under him and held out his hand for Charles, pulled him to _his_ feet and turned to where Trelawny stepped out from behind his horse Gwydion, dark suit neat and crisp around his spindly frame, because damn him, Charles was _right_ ; old instincts in his head and heart were traces that had tied him to his family even when he was young and half-feral and not entirely certain he wanted to be tied to a family at all, and Dutch had brought Sean into that family just as he had John so long ago. Marston was one unwanted little brother and Sean the other, and Sean might have had less brains than the common mushroom but there was nothing Arthur wouldn’t do for family.

There was nothing Arthur wouldn’t do for Dutch, who had kindled that virtue in him, so he gestured to the horses and collected his mustang’s bridle. “Charles, head over to the north side of the river, we'll head up on the other side of the valley and meet you there, have 'em in both directions if need be. We lose him here we ain't gettin' that little bastard back."

Charles clapped a broad hand on Arthur's shoulder as he nodded, and squeezed, once; lingering, fingers dragging a little as he stepped away towards Taima who stood placidly waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's uncertain, yes, Trelawny is 100% a cryptid. I don't know what kind - fae, maybe? - but he's definitely not human. Not a shapeshifter, either - it's all illusions.
> 
> (Also I'm sorry if it's choppy and awkward - I'm quietly turning into some sort of nocturnal goblin and I wrote this across two weeks' worth of 2 am mornings while procrastinating on a project for uni I have to do. On the bright side I don't feel like a bag of wet sand from keeping to a normal sleep schedule anymore.)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Quick warning** , this chapter has a gunfight. I wouldn't say it's too graphic - I don't go into too much detail about the bodies and such - but if that's not your thing stop when Trelawny stops speaking and skip to the page break for Sean's party.

A boat drifted across Flat Iron Lake and docked at Blackwater as the pale dawn crept in, sunlight crawling weak and watery over the ground. Long and almost flat-bottomed, guards posted all around the deck - no getting Sean from the boat’s depths, but Trelawny wasn’t going to try and led them instead along the cliff edge in single file, following the boat as if they were only a couple of friends out on the trail; curious spectators more than anything else, harmless bystanders.

Arthur ran his thumb around the weight of his revolver, the wooden grip worn smooth. “You got a plan, Trelawny?” He called.

Trelawny hummed a little. “The beginnings of one, dear boy,” He said. “But unfortunately only the beginnings of one. I think I’d like to see what we’re dealing with first before I say anything - and before I leave the wetwork to you fine gentlemen, of course. I’m much more ill-suited to it than you are; my kind of legwork is much more… ah...”

“ _Gentlemanly_ ,” Said Javier, amused.

“Well I was going to say _tedious_ ,” Trelawny said, a little put out, “But, yes, I suppose. As fond as I am of my time slinging guns and robbing trains and rolling in the mud with you reprobates, a fellow _must_ have some standards, for the sake of his suits if nothing else.”

Arthur smoothed his hand down his mustang’s neck, kept an eye on the boat crawling up the Montana river. Held her steady and slow when she tossed her head and tried to jump into a trot, gently pulling back on the reins until she obeyed and slowed - he murmured her praises, too, as Trelawny spoke over his head about the mess they’d left behind in Blackwater, because Arthur didn’t need to listen to that.

Dutch had told Hosea, and there was no privacy in camp and even less in wagons on the roads so they’d all known long before Dutch told them the story. Heidi McCourt, the girls had all whispered, hushed as they huddled around Davey and listened to the scrape of his breathing, the dull drag of his head against the wagon floor as he shifted restlessly. A young thing, and a kind one by all accounts - pretty, too, ‘fore her brains splashed against the wall, pieces of her skull collected in a matchbox.

(Micah’s fault, Arthur was certain, and it was petty and stupid but he couldn’t quite shake that accusation he’d made - that Micah hadn’t denied. He always goaded, always escalated; all sharp eyes and gleaming claws and smiles baring teeth, barking and baying like he was trying to call them to hunt. The first to turn, shredding out of skin and clothes to seize a man’s throat between his jaws. It wasn’t a far jump to make.)

(Arthur didn’t know. People made stupid decisions under pressure - Arthur would know; it was no fault of Dutch’s he buckled under it.)

Bad business all ‘round, for the girl and for them and for Dutch. An exile for a few lean months hardly seemed penance, but they’d lost people, too - good people; yellow-eyed Jenny, lean and hard beneath pale fur and paler skin, who held hands with Lenny; sand-furred Mac and Davey, identical down to the bone and mad as a box of frogs, but loyal, gave due credence to Dutch’s tenets.

It wasn’t absolution, it wasn’t payment, and it wasn’t just. Not for them, and not for the McCourt’s neither. But, Arthur thought, sitting up straighter in the saddle as Trelawny started to slow just after they passed the creek flowing from Strawberry into the river below, it was something. Maybe they’d even learn from it.

They slunk low below the ridge, following a steep, narrow path down to the side of the river, and left the horses safely out of sight in its shadow; the boat was dragged up onto the shallow sandy shore on the far side, no sign of Sean but scuff marks dug deep in the dirt and two guards left to stand watch. Arthur and Javier crouched down behind a boulder, and Javier licked his lips. “The plan, Trelawny?” He asked, low enough his voice turned hollow, husky - too polite to be a demand, but there was an edge there as sharp as the knife on his hip. “Have you got one?”

Trelawny crouched down with them, dark eyes on the two guards. He nodded, just the once. “I certainly do, dear boy,” He said. “I certainly do. Take out those knives - I’ll cause a distraction and you two take care of those gentlemen - _quietly_. It’s up to you after that, though I suppose you’ll have no choice but to fight your way through.”

Arthur looked to Javier, who shrugged and nodded, so Arthur tipped his head to Trelawny. “Thanks for the help.”

“Any time, dear boy,” Said Trelawny, and ran his hands through his hair, his moustache; messy and wild-eyed in a moment, neat suit crumpled and dark with nervous sweat, though he didn’t smell of it. “Good luck, gentlemen.”

Arthur thumbed the wooden handle of his old hunting knife a moment, and followed Javier into the water when Trelawny stumbled across the sand, panting with breathless desperation as he reached out to one of the men, grabbed the lapels of his jacket. It fit well in his hand, the knife - its handle worn smooth over the years, its weight familiar against the rough skin of his palms; Dutch’s present to a lost young werewolf new to growing into his limbs, to keep safe a kid he didn’t expect to stick around.

Still sharp, when he slid it across a man’s throat and breathed in the familiar coppery stink of blood and fear, sharp and acrid in his mouth and nose; swallowing the nausea burrowing into his throat, the ache in the base of his teeth. Arthur wiped it clean on the man’s grey jacket, shoved it into its sheath and pulled out his Cattleman, pressing bullets into the chamber and pulling back the hammer. Whistled a command, sharp and short, and Javier pulled the repeater from his back, aimed into the gorge, and fired.

He fell into that familiar rhythm, then - into fighting his way through the gorge by Javier’s side, aiming for the guards on the ground as Javier picked off the men on the cliff; into the counting of bullets as he fired, heartbeat hammering alongside the pull of the trigger, drumming in his blood his ears, his head. Teeth bared, jaw clenched against the noise and the burn of gunpowder in his nose - three four five six, knocking the chamber out to the side to load more bullets, quick and practised, and raising it, aiming it; hitting heads and hearts, pushing on inch by inch as the light of the rising sun burned white on the gorge’s pale stone, blood glittering like rubies where it was splashed against the walls, soaking dark as oil into the ground.

He growled, low, lost in the gunfire, and under blood and fear and gunpowder and death, the bodies they left in their wake, was Sean’s blood, Sean’s fear, _Sean_ , and from the cliffs Charles shouted, “He’s this way!” And Arthur followed Charles and Javier followed him, slipping from cover to cover, quick as a cat as he downed a man on horseback and Arthur killed his friend. The horse reared, screamed in fright, eyes rolling white in terror - a Morgan, Arthur thought, and rumbled low in his throat. A soft horse like that had no business being in a fight.

They descended on the camp, then - darting between rotting sheds and abandoned crates, sheltering in the shadows and Arthur shouted - barked something, an order or a statement, he wasn’t sure, but he picked his way through the bullets and bodies and shoved his shoulder against a boulder, breathing hard a moment. Just a moment, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the noise and the burning sun and the logging camp quietly collapsing as Javier and Charles covered him from behind the fallen timbers of a half-dead shack.

“Arthur!” Sean called, loud and grating and bright with delight, laughing as he swayed, hung by the feet from the tree’s branch, fingers skimming the grass. Bruised and battered, wispy fluff a scruff on his cheeks, hair red as the smear of blood around his nose, blue wolf’s eyes nearly bright against his pale, freckled skin. Alive. “You grumpy ol’ bastard you! Knew you’d come fer me!” He laughed, then, mouth half open in a wide puppy grin. “Life jus’ wasn’t complete wit’out Sean MacGuire, eh? You love me really, I always knew it!”

Arthur leaned up out of cover; four five six, two in the chest and one in the head, and Arthur reloaded, aimed at the rope. “Stop squirmin’!” He said, and Sean froze, then tucked his chin to his chest, curling in, arms around the back of his head. One, and Sean hit the ground with a grunt, scrabbling at Arthur’s arm as he grabbed his scruff and dragged him safe behind cover.

Two three four, five and six warning shots that burrowed harmlessly into the ground, and it was done; Ike Skelding's boys retreated into the trees.

He breathed out, slow and deep. Refilled his revolver and holstered it, kneeling down to cut the rope tight around Sean’s ankles and haul him to his feet. “Y’alright there?” He said, partly to Sean but partly to Javier and Charles, too, as they picked their way through the ruined camp.

Javier hissed as he thumbed away blood oozing from a small graze on his cheek, but Charles only stood placid as he put away his gun, utterly unruffled. Sean bounced on the balls of his feet, cuffing Arthur’s shoulder. “Always knew ya cared for me big man!” He said, tongue near lolling out of his mouth like a pup. “You played at not likin’ me, but I knew the truth!”

Arthur folded his arms over his chest. “Listen,” He said. “I love this gang - I was raised in it, and I have killed for it and will happily die for it when that time comes. Ain’t nothing more real to me than this family of ours and there ain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do for it neither. Come Hell or high water.” He grinned, showed teeth. “But I would have gladly left you swinging there if Charles hadn’t stopped me.”

“Ach!” Sean scoffed, grinning right back as he ducked his head and shoved Arthur’s shoulder. “Lie to yerself as you like, but ye love me really, English! Don’t gotta be so sour all the time now - the joy’s back in your lives!”

Arthur shoved him, hard enough he stumbled. “Get him outta here!” He said, and Sean saluted, cackling. “Javier, take Sean back to camp. Make sure the idiot behaves himself. Charles, best you ride separately. I’ll give you a few minutes ‘fore I head back too, make sure the law don’t catch wind of you.”

Javier whistled for the horses and settled in Boaz’s saddle, patting his grey neck as Sean hopped up behind him. “Stay safe,” Charles said.

Arthur waved him off, watched them go as he whistled for his mustang and gave her a mint for obeying. The sun kept rising in the endless, cloudless sky; its light glinted off his horse’s silver coat, and the blood and guns splashed and scattered through the grass. The trees swayed gently in the breeze, rope with a frayed end swinging from a branch. After a long while Arthur put his foot in the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle, spurring his horse into a brisk trot as he made his way home.

-:-

Dutch was waiting at the edge of camp, hip leaned against the hitching post and grinning wide through the dark, eyes bright and pleased; he spread his arms in welcome when Arthur slowed his horse to a stop and dismounted, taking off her tack and letting her make her way to the pasture. He clapped a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, laughing loud and booming. “Arthur!” He crowed, and shook him joyfully. “Oh Arthur, _my boy_! You got the little Irish terrier back to us!” Dutch laughed again, bouncing up onto his toes. “We have been on the down and out too long, but our luck has turned and we are celebrating tonight! The little menace is back and more brash than ever; seems his time with the local law didn’t scare some sense into him after all!”

At the far end of camp where it was backed up safely away from the cliff edge Sean stood on top of a table, swaying, and raised a bottle in their name - a toast to the brave souls who’d gone to rescue him. Declaring his love for those brothers in arms, for miserable old Charles and knife-sharp Javier and gruff and grumpy Arthur, and swearing that with him back up and running he’d get together the money that would deliver them to Dutch’s promised land all on his lonesome.

And then he raised his bottle a little too high into the air, tipped his head back in a wailing cheer a little too far, and Miss Grimshaw had to drag him back down to the ground before he hurt himself.

“Seems so,” Arthur agreed, and his mouth twisted.

“Arthur?”

“Listen Dutch,” Arthur murmured, and glanced over at the party starting to pick up steam. “I gotta talk to you. Real soon. Right now, maybe - I dunno.”

The trees rustled gently with the whisper of wind that carried the smell of spring and the warm days ahead, the horses in their pasture quietly grazing grass grown dense and springy underfoot. His mustang found her way to Taima’s side, and reached out to greet The Count and Silver Dollar. With the purple dusk settling heavy with the setting of the sun the air was cool, but not cold - the scout fire burned bright against the long shadows, warm against Arthur’s side.

Dutch watched Arthur’s face - Arthur couldn’t quite hold his gaze. Studied him, arms crossed across his chest, smoothing his moustache with thumb and forefinger. Dutch licked his lips. Shifted on his feet, leaning a little closer. “Somethin’ happen out there, son?” He murmured, low and soft.

“Came across two O’Driscolls out huntin’,” Arthur said, and Dutch stilled, eyes narrowing, lips pulling back from his teeth- “Didn’t do nothin’,” He hurried. “They was just kids, didn’t know what they were doin'. Didn’ recognise me neither, but… I was on the western side of the Dakota river, little upstream of here, and they was crossing from this side, so...”

Dutch nodded. “So Colm is settled nearby.” 

“Maybe,” Arthur said. “Ain’t seen any others yet, though, so maybe their hunting took ‘em too far away?”

“Oh no, Colm don’t let his rats scurry too far from the nest if he can help it,” Dutch said. His jaw worked, like he was chewing on the words he wanted to say, the insults he wanted to spit venom bitter with old hurts, but he stayed quiet a moment, looking out over camp. It wasn’t the place Dutch wanted them to be, but it was safe, tents and wagons makeshift homes, food and clothes and space shared because it wasn’t a very steep price to pay for the full might of Dutch Van der Linde and the cursed beasts at his beck and call; Arthur, and the other wolves Hosea and Sean and Micah, and Bill the bear who bellowed drinking songs right alongside them.

It was all Arthur had ever known, or had wanted to know after he stole his father’s hat from his head as he hung there by the neck and ran with everything he could carry. There was a price in his skin, and in Sean and Hosea’s and Bill’s, in Micah’s, and it was the same price that had been in Annabelle’s, too, if Colm had been able to take it.

“The question is,” Dutch said, low and thoughtful as he rolled the words ‘round his mouth, the scout fire’s light casting shadows dark over his eyes, “Did Colm follow us down? Coincidence is one thing, we can work with that, but I ain’t too comfortable with him knowing we’re here.”

Arthur sighed, rested his hands on his belt as he watched the party pick up, John twirling Abigail, or trying anyway, to some bawdy song Uncle was singing and playing on his banjo, side by side with miss Grimshaw who raised her voice with his and smacked Sean when he howled the high notes. Javier despaired and played a gentler tune a ways away on his guitar for Tilly and Hosea and Mary-Beth, while Strauss half-patiently stopped the Reverend from trying to drink just _one more_ bottle of whiskey and he was done for good.

“Think we should move camp just in case?”

Dutch tapped the pads of his fingers against his lips, then let his arms drop, shaking his head. “No,” He said. “No, not- not yet. Colm’d’ve let us knew if he knew we was here, and we can’t afford to run from here.” His jaw tightened. “Ain’t nowhere to go when we don’t have money, and if Colm’s around he’s locked down the land for miles. We got no other choice but to stay, for now, and we’re standing our ground if it comes to it. Though I reckon he ain’t desperate enough yet to try that.”

Sean tugged Karen behind some of the trees, coaxing and cajoling, rolling his face across her throat as he crooned to her; she smiled, wicked, and didn’t try to pretend that she didn’t stink of desire or wasn’t pulling herself free. Arthur grimaced. “It’s a blood feud, Dutch, and it’s been goin’ on for years now - he’s gotta be a _li’l_ desperate by now.”

Dutch only shrugged, stepped away. Arthur’s jaw tightened, anxiety prickling below his ribs. “I don’t know, son,” Dutch said, “But I got the finest guns on my side and the fiercest hounds this side of Hell’s gate; if he thinks his boys’re a match to mine, and they sure as shit ain’t a match to you, then I would so dearly like to see him try.”

Arthur let him go, watching Dutch shake himself and melt into the fray around the main fire, sitting beside Hosea on the log and raising his voice to a song. Dutch knew Colm best, of course he did, but… it had been a long time since they’d worked together, and Dutch’s old lessons about hatred and revenge sat heavy in his head. It was a fool’s game, revenge, and anger had a way of twisting folk, when it rotted and festered for years.

He shook loose the thoughts, got a bottle of beer from a crate on the table in front of Dutch’s tent and nursed it, watching John and Bill drink themselves stupid and pretending not to hear Sean and Karen gettin’ friendly just out of sight in the trees. Dutch stayed close at Hosea’s side, knocking elbows and sharing grins, murmuring low and rough little jokes and asides to make him laugh while Miss Grimshaw drank whiskey from the bottle and cackled at Javier’s raised eyebrow.

Little Jack, grinning with delight at being up past his bedtime and at his uncle finally home, hid behind them as Abigail pretended to fuss and worry, hiding smiles behind her hands as she turned her back on Jack hiding behind Arthur’s legs. “ _Uncle Arthur_!” He whispered loudly.

“ _Jack_!” Arthur said, just as loudly. “Coast is clear, but you don’t go tellin’ your momma I hid you, alright?”

Jack nodded, hard enough his fluff of mousy hair bounced. “Sure thing Uncle Arthur!” He said.

“Good kid,” Arthur said, and nudged him over to Dutch and Hosea. “Go on now, you go have fun.” He swallowed the last of what was in his bottle, and ambled over to the nearest crate, setting it down nearby as he got a new one. ‘Course they came from Ambarino with nothing but the clothes on their back and dust in the coffers, and Pearson still somehow managed to get them all enough drinks to stay drunk 'til next week.

The bottle dangled from his fingers, heavy and swaying; Arthur got a second one, sniffed the air, and made his way over to the entrance of camp where Charles lurked just outside, hulking and looming through the dark. Arthur waggled it at him, and Charles snorted softly, leaning against the hitching post with him as he planted the repeater upright between his knees and took it. “You’re not as drunk as I thought you’d be,” He said.

“I can moderate just fine.”

“That’s not what I heard from Mac and Davey,” Charles said. “Or Dutch. Or Miss Grimshaw, Tilly, Hosea, John, Bill-”

“Yeah, alright, you gonna drink wi’ me or not?” Arthur said, leaning back, bottle dangling loose from his fingers by his knees. “If I wanted to be chided I’d go drink with the Reverend, listen to him preachin' at the chickens.”

Charles smiled, said nothing, but he put the mouth of his bottle to his lips and drank, head tipped back, bare throat bared. Arthur drank, too - thought that maybe he should have got whiskey instead. It burned down his throat just the same, though; some bitter rotgut sitting heavy in his stomach as he watched over camp, Charles’ warmth bleeding through his shirt against the night’s gathering chill. He smelled like dirt, Charles did - the clean, growing kind of dirt, dark beneath their feet, and the Great Plains’ dust and the shadow of gunsmoke.

Dutch’s gramophone crackled out his favourite fancy song and he tugged Hosea into a dance, arm around Hosea’s narrow hips and hand on his narrow shoulder, sliding down his arm, across his skin; holding his hand as they swayed together in little circles by his tent’s flaps. Head tipped close, smiling upwards, eyes half-lidded. A kiss pressed to Hosea’s mouth, small and soft, lingering. “Hosea,” Dutch breathed, fond and proud and happy, and on Hosea’s back his thumb rubbed back and forth over the blue waistcoat, just above his belt.

“You never did tell me how you got that mustang from the O’Driscolls,” Charles said.

He wasn’t a handsome man, Arthur thought. Not like Dutch was handsome. Wasn’t a talker like Hosea, or some dapper dime-novel gentleman like Trelawny, and he certainly wasn’t John with that dumb kind of charm Abigail seemed to like. His face was round and his jaw was soft, nose broad under narrow eyes, the scar cutting ugly and jagged up his cheek. Big and broad and stocky, the slope of his shoulders wide, arms thick, hands strong.

Noble, maybe, with his soft voice and honest words, a good man or as good as an outlaw could be. Arthur cleared his throat, took a swig. “Ain’t so interestin’,” He said. “Came across these two kids out hunting werewolves, thought they’d take a shot at me.” He shrugged. “Knocked ‘em on their asses and took the mustang for myself, left them there in their dirt. Didn’t even try to fire at me, so… seemed fair I let ‘em go.”

“She got a name yet?”

Arthur shook his head. “No, not yet. Don’t know her well enough, and I don’t got the head for it.” Though he could at least say he was better than Uncle, who’d called every horse he’d owned in his time with them Nell. “I’ll work it out,” Arthur said. “Eventually. Hell, maybe I’ll just steal Taima’s name - it sounds pretty.”

“It just means ‘thunder’.”

“Still pretty,” Arthur said, and he watched the scout fire’s light glinting through the dark glass of his bottle, the dim glow of it through the beer. “I called my first horse Arvak after some horse in a viking myth Hosea told ‘bout once. Don’t sound quite so nice as Taima.” He drank, looked over his shoulder and admired his mustang as she drifted through the trees. “Maybe I oughta call her Kelpie - she seems like the kinda horse to drown a man she don’t like.”

“Nice name,” Charles agreed. “I’m glad she didn’t drown you, though.”

“Maybe we oughta get Micah on her back?”

Charles laughed, loud and sudden; he hid his teeth as he smiled. “I’d like to see that!” He said, and laughed again. The firelight glowed soft over his dark skin, glittered in his dark eyes, disappeared somewhere in the long sweep of his black hair, not pretty and not handsome and not John-dumb charming, but _something_. “She might not let him get close enough to get in the saddle, though.”

Arthur’s grin showed teeth, though he dropped his gaze a little to keep the threat from it. “Who said he was gonna be in the saddle?”

“There he is!” Charles said, elbowing him. “And here I thought I imagined Dutch’s big bully beast, all those months ago.” He drank the last of his beer, licking the wet from his lips, and set it down by his feet. They watched the scout fire a while, listening to it crackle under Karen’s muffled little cries and Sean’s throaty brogue and the quiet, halting tune Javier played on his guitar, sweet and sad. "I have to say," He added, "I'm glad I was wrong about you."

The rising moon had waxed full, its light soft over the fluttering tent canvas, Kelpie’s back as she rested beside Taima, over Charles’ face until he glowed almost blue. Vaguely, Arthur wondered what the moon turned him into, in Charles’ eyes, though he supposed it was only the monstrous parts of himself no werebeast could ever shake away - monster’s eyes and monster’s teeth betraying the beast under human skin.

There was nothing else to him, after all; Charles was wrong for once, though the thought sat uncomfortable behind his ribs.

Charles picked up his repeater; Arthur cleared his throat, shoved himself to his feet. “I’ll, uh, let you get back to work,” Arthur said, left him to his post, and in the harsh lamplight in his tent he sat on his bed and opened to a clean page in his journal. He drew the wreckage of the logging camp when it was all said and done, the bodies scattered in the grass and little flowers, slumped against crates and collapsing walls. Drew Kelpie, silver and pretty under the dappled shadows of West Elizabeth’s forest, and drew Charles, with the broad slope of his shoulders and the weight in his gaze, the easy surety of his hands around the camp’s carbine repeaters.

_Charles, Javier, and I have retrieved Sean, and all we got out of it is an annoying little bastard, a horse, and a party, though I suppose I cannot complain. Kelpie is strong and proud and is not fazed at all by folk with second skins, and it’s good to get another gun back with us, after Jenny and Davey, though I am doubting Mac will ever make his way back too. Hard times hit us at Blackwater and if he is alive he wouldn’t be the first man to see to his own safety first. I will not blame him for that, if he has._

_Kelpie is a beautiful mustang, and I am real pleased she seems to like me as much as I like her. I suppose I will miss my Walker - he has been faithful enough - but I am glad he’s being cared for in a proper stable. He will make a fine friend for someone, though I’m a little sad that friend will not be me._

_I do not know what to make of Charles. I like him, more than I thought I would all them months ago when Dutch took him in; he is a good man, and a smart one, though I don’t reckon he’s got as much sense as brains in his head since he seems to enjoy talking to me. But he’s separate from us, too, in ways I am not equipped to fathom. I suppose against some of the rest of us six months is not all that long, and he does not share much of himself the way the rest of us are liable to._

_If he is hiding things, somehow I get the feeling that it will not bite us in the ass not to find out what they are. I trust him more than I will ever trust Micah, who reminds me of a coyote who once stalked us for months and killed our chickens before Hosea shot him dead one night._

_Time will tell, but a few guns down and with O’Driscolls crawling out of their holes around us I only hope we'll have enough time_ _to_ _tell._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's a bit late - I don't have an excuse, writing just took longer than I thought it would. But, here's an extra long chapter to make up for it, _and_ Sean's back! Funky little bastard boy. He's very fun to write, actually, although I think I need to do a lot more work on his accent, it doesn't sound quite right.
> 
> And more Charthur because I want to get that ship sailing sometime this century. I tested it and you can actually find Charles during Sean's party - I found him on guard close to the road, although he might move around, I'm not sure. He doesn't say much, though.
> 
> (Arthur really wants to be Charles' gun this chapter, doesn't he?)


	9. Chapter 9

Arthur lingered around camp for a little while, doing chores and going out to do odd jobs to keep the camp fund topped up. Collecting from a few of Strauss’ debtors, though it was only ever going to be those few and Strauss was made well aware of that, and when he wasn’t friendly with debtors he was making himself known to the local law as the man to go to when they wanted their bounties alive; if they came in with a few bites and scratches, well, sheriff Malloy didn’t ask questions. “Takes a dangerous beast to hunt dangerous men,” He said, rooting through the drawer for the bounty money.

“Yeah, well,” Arthur said, collecting his pay. “Says more ‘bout them than it does me. You take care.”

He made sure Sean settled back in easy, too - that he didn’t step on any toes or sparked Hosea’s temper, which was always frayed after close calls. Which he did; he slept and ate and clung close to Karen, sniffin’ up her skirts, which they let him do because he’d come away from capture a little worse for wear, and Karen could - and usually did - easily knock Sean on his ass if she decided she didn’t like the attention.

(Karen had started to carry the smell of him again, thick over her skin and her throat, in her clothes, and Sean carried the smell of _her_ over his skin and jaw, in _his_ clothes. Neither of them carried the stink of anyone else, except the gang faint underneath it all because there was no escaping that when they all lived nearly on top of each other.)

Sean was quiet, too, or quiet _er_ ‘cause Lord knew he couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life. Didn’t last long though, more’s the pity; the peace and quiet was nice while it lasted. But eventually Hosea ordered Sean to stand guard, wrote him into the roster just to make sure he couldn’t pawn it off, and there was no disobeying Hosea. Took even less time for him to be properly back on his feet, a loud-mouthed little shit Arthur was half disappointed in himself for rescuing.

Things were good for the time being. Dutch made trips into Valentine to put his ear to the ground, and there was no rumble through the dirt of Blackwater’s law making their way outside the Great Plains just yet, even after Sean had been taken from right under their noses, so it seemed they’d be alright on that front. Scouted for easy jobs, too, with Hosea, talking together long about leads and tips, two conspirators against the world again. Spring tightened its hold while Lenny and Micah kept scouting the situation around Blackwater; Miss Grimshaw finished making the camp a home and they dug their heels in to stay.

The evening sun beat down from a sky soft with pinkish clouds, a rare lazy break with nothing needing doing; they all lolled about camp, except Bill and Javier on guard - Hosea idly playing poker with John and Dutch reading under a tree, shooing away the chickens who came to look at his book, Uncle plucking at his banjo’s strings. Miss Grimshaw even let the girls’ work slow as they talked and mended clothes, though she still bustled between the tents cleaning away the dinner bowls.

Arthur stretched, legs stiff, back arched, and pressed his face into the hay, shortened tail gently thumping the ground when Jack sat with him, tucked up in the curl of his belly and patting the dense meat of his shoulder, his broad head; gently smoothing a velvety ear, tracing the small hole in it from a rifle's bullet. “I saw a _huge_ bug, uncle Arthur!” He said, absolutely delighted, so Arthur obligingly said _Hmm?_ and Jack leaned forward, spreading his hands in front of Arthur’s nose to show how big it was. “It was this huge uncle Arthur!” He said, “But I didn’t get to catch it to show you and momma. Uncle said it wasn’t nice to take him from his house under the rock.”

“Mm,” Arthur agreed. Probably had more to do with Abigail hating anything that scuttled about on more legs than a chair than anything else, but Jack didn’t need to know that.

He dozed while Jack played by his side, picking hay from his fur and drawing shapes in the dirt, until Miss Grimshaw stopped bustling about long enough to stop by. “Hello Jack!” She said, and gently pulled him to his feet. “Why don’t you go play over there for a while, I need to borrow your uncle Arthur.” 

“Okay!” Said Jack, and he waved as he trotted away. “Bye uncle Arthur!”

Miss Grimshaw waved back, then poked Arthur awake - pulling on his foot and jabbing his side until he snapped at her wrist, jaws wide, not even clicking shut before he lay back down in the pile of hay, flat out on his side and enjoying the warm sun, and determined to _continue_ enjoying it.

She didn’t even grace him with a flinch, just pulled on his leg some more.

“ _Mister Morgan_ ,” Miss Grimshaw said, steely, when Arthur whuffed at her, ears folded back. “Up, _now_! MacGuire has parked himself right between your tent and Dutch’s, making an _utter nuisance_ of himsef, and I need you to move him _now_.” Arthur growled - more of a groan, really - and miss Grimshaw grabbed his scruff and rolled him to his belly, up to his feet. “Don’t you talk back to me!” She shrieked. “ _Now_!”

Arthur snapped at her again, but she pulled his ear and glared so he got up to where Sean was flat out on his side, also enjoying the sun. When snapping at _him_ didn’t get him up Arthur had to drag him out of the way, scruff between his teeth and arms around his chest, awkward on his two hind feet as he dragged Sean’s through the dirt. Dutch chuckled at him from under his tree, puffing contentedly on a cigar, and made no move to help; Hosea laughed at him outright. “Oh, don’t be so grumpy Arthur,” He said, giving his shoulder a sturdy thump when he dropped Sean on his bedroll and went stalking back to the hay pile. “So sour today.”

He lay back down with a huff, legs tucked neatly beneath him, but he was _up_ now - damnit - so he stalked off to his tent to change, crouching by his bed as his fur wasted away back into his skin, breathing out slow as his chest flattened, collarbones widening, arms settling into their sockets; stretching out as his legs cramped back into feet and his paws loosened into hands, enough to scratch his bearded jaw. He settled his jeans around his hips, belt tight and suspenders loose around his thighs as he started to shave. He left a little scruff behind - it softened his face a touch, made his wolf’s teeth not quite so obvious in his mouth - and shrugged on a loose shirt, settling down on his bed with his journal to pass the time.

He drew Hosea playing poker with John; the smug set of his narrow shoulders, chin resting on his palm above where he’d planted his elbow on the table, and John with the ugly slash of scars across his face, scowling down at his hand on the other side, lips pursed petulantly, nose wrinkling not quite like a frustrated snarl but close enough that Hosea pressed a hand over his smiling mouth and snorted.

John must have been bored, or else had cash burning his leg from its pocket, because there was no beating Hosea even when he was playing fair.

 _I love John something fierce_ , Arthur wrote. _But he is a fool with more brass than brains; like a stray dog he thinks he stands alone, or that he must stand alone to look fearsome and stronger than he really is. But I suppose I am grateful that that goddamn mutt John Marston had the sense to throw his lot back in with those who love him, more fool us. Dogs are the cousins to wolves, after all, and a wolf is nothing without family. Perhaps if Abigail can knock some more into his head he may turn out to be a decent man one day, although I will also take him becoming any sort of man at all._

_It's no surprise John lost at poker. I am a terrible liar and yet somehow John is even worse, and I do enjoy watching Hosea wreak his havoc at the poker table, so long as that havoc is not at my expense._

The birdsong quieted; Hosea froze, head snapping to the copse of trees shielding their camp, nose raised to the gentle wind. Arthur rose with him stepped out to his side - even Sean stirred from where Arthur’d dumped him. He sniffed; smelled horse and sweat and fear, the faint bite of old blood underneath it - faint but cloying in the back of his mouth. Hoofbeats thudded against the ground - John's hand hovered over his revolver, and by the treeline Javier raised his repeater.

“It’s Lenny!” Bill called from the road, and Dutch levered himself to his feet with a groan as Lenny came crashing through the trees, Maggie’s yellow flanks heaving, hooves skidding through the dirt as Lenny pulled her to a stop and near fell off her back, stumbling towards Dutch.

“Dutch!” He called, panting, and Hosea shot to his side, caught his arm and held him upright as Lenny’s knees buckled. The kid just grit his teeth and stayed upright, holding fast to Hosea’s coat sleeve. “Dutch, it’s Micah - he got caught. In Strawberry. Met some fellers, dunno who - started drinking, caused a fight. I got away, just about.”

Dutch caught Arthur’s eye and motioned him over, clapped a hand on Lenny’s shoulder and bent down to catch his gaze. “Breathe, son,” He said, low and soothing, and Lenny gulped a mouthful of air. “Easy now. What happened?”

“We went out scouting, like you asked, sir,” Lenny said, free hand shaking as Hosea passed him over and Arthur helped him back upright. “Into West Elizabeth, see how they was feeling about us over there, if it was safe for us to move through and such, and he heads into Strawberry, _so_ I gotta go with him! You said we had to stick together, so we did, and he found someplace to get drinks - didn’t know it was that kinda town - and he started drinking and drinking, and I said maybe we oughta head back, but he just says to me ‘you shut your mouth, kid!’, and someone at the bar muttered something so he glasses him, and I dunno how but then the whole street was filled with folk trying to quiet down the riot he’d started, so Micah shoots a man in the head and the sheriff came out and arrested him.”

Dutch’s jaw tightened, hand clenching at his side, but the hand on Lenny’s shoulder gripped loose, giving him two sturdy pats. “You did good, son,” He said, “Real good. You hurt?”

Lenny trembled, shaking his hanging head as he swallowed. “There’s talk of hanging him,” He said.

“Here’s hoping.”

“ _Arthur_!” Dutch chided, turning on him, and Arthur rumbled low in his throat.

“What?” He said, and licked his lip to hide their curl. “That idiot’s gone and got himself caught killin’ a man in a fight _he_ caused, ‘cause he’s too hot-headed to keep cool on a job even John can do! And it used to be we couldn’t even take John to buy a new pair of boots without him makin’ a goddamn scene!”

“ _Hey_!” John rasped indignantly.

Arthur bent his head close to Dutch’s, murmured as low as the roughness of his voice would allow. “He’s caused nothin’ but problems since he joined on, and they ain’t even Sean’s kinda problems where he makes a mistake or two ‘cause he’s still a little wet ‘round the ears. I say we cut him loose and quit while we’re ahead, ‘fore he causes a problem bigger’n the one he made at Blackwater.”

“We are _not_ cutting anyone loose,” Dutch said, harsh, gripping Arthur’s shirt collar at the back of his neck, fingers loose around his nape; holding his gaze until Arthur dropped his head. He squirmed under the loose hold, growling low in his throat; Dutch’s moustache bristled as his mouth thinned, dark eyes hard and flat. “He is a member of this gang whether you like it or not, and _we protect our own_. We ain’t got nothing but loyalty in this life, Arthur, else we ain’t got nothing at all.” Dutch’s thumb stroked the back of Arthur’s neck, gentle, calluses catching on the hairs bristling irritated under his hand. “He’d do the same for you.”

“Only ‘cause you told him to.”

“But he’d still go,” Dutch said. “Same as I am asking _you_ to go. Please, son.”

Arthur jerked out of the hold, swallowing the growl in his throat as he ran a hand through his hair. “Fine,” He said, stalking off to his tent to grab his hat, shoving the worn old thing on his head. “But I ain’t making no promises to bring him back without a scratch.”

Placidly, Dutch spread his hands, palm out. “I ain’t asking for more than that, son,” He said, and Arthur nodded, jerking his gunbelt around his hips, shoving his feet into his worn old boots. “Just, take Lenny to the saloon while you’re out? Give him a li’l something to settle his nerves, and yours.” And that was easier to bear doing, so Arthur breathed out the worst of his irritation and nodded again, settling the strap of his satchel around his shoulder and catching Lenny’s elbow, gently tugging him over to the horses.

Arthur forced himself to calm down on the ride into Valentine, temper cooling with the night’s chill, because Lenny didn’t deserve to have to deal with his mood. Weren’t no fault of his Micah was a goddamn lunatic, and he did feel settled by the time they hitched their horses along the muddy street, Karen’s smokey Old Belle beside silvery Kelpie since Karen let Lenny borrow her; Maggie deserved a rest after such a hard ride.

The saloon was bustling when Arthur and Lenny stepped inside, bright with light and noise, the crowd thick but not so thick they couldn’t get seats at the bar. Even over the press of people Arthur thought the pianist playing a jaunty song by the window wasn’t human - didn’t smell it, his slender fingers spidery over the keys, his heartbeat slow inside his chest. Neither was the woman at a table nearby, smiling adoringly beneath half-lidded, black eyes as she rested her chin on her fine-boned hands. “Oh,” She said, licking pointed fangs, “To have you play me like that piano of yours.”

The pianist didn’t fumble, though it was a near thing; a hiss rattled in his throat. “ _Fifty years_ you’ve said that.” He said. “ _Every performance_ , for _fifty years_.”

“Darling,” The woman cooed, low like purr. The rumble of it shivered through the floor, up against Arthur’s feet through his boots. She tucked a lock of pale hair behind her ear. “Of course I do - those magnificent hands of yours; any woman would want to have them on _her_ keys.”

She smiled, slow and sweet as the pianist missed a note and slammed his hands down, teeth bared as frustration clattered around in his mouth like a snake’s rattle. The saloon fell quiet, folk watching from the corners of their eyes; Arthur didn’t bother pretending he wasn’t watching. The bartender wasn’t either, mutely shaking his head as he cleaned glasses.

“What song,” She said, rolling the wedding ring around her finger, standing up and away from the table, “Would you play on _me_ , darling?”

The pianist whirled to his feet, a hissed snarl in his throat, muscle bubbling and frothing beneath skin pulling back into a bat’s flat-nosed face. “ _I will boil your teeth_!” He roared, hunch tearing through his shirt, long, broad ears folded against his neck, claws flexing against the air; wedding ring glinting from his long, boney finger.

A few of the people nearest edged away; the woman licked her thin lips, dress tearing as she changed to mirror him, feet lengthening as her toes turned to paws. “Wouldn’t you rather have them around your-?”

The pianist _lunged_ , grabbing the woman by the tatters of her dress and launching her through the window - glass and wood shattered and she hit the decking outside with a heavy _thump_ , and the pianist scuttled after her, shredding out of the last of his clothes, bristling with short, dense fur; claws scratching the wood, skin stretched between elbow and hip.

But the woman was waiting, mouth open, pointed tongue lolling between the broad knives of her teeth as she batted at him with wide-spaced claws, throwing him to his back and biting harmlessly at his ear. She let him scratch and bite and throw her off - he wasn’t drawing blood - and scrabbled up the side of the general store, hissing without threat; almost yipping with delight as she pranced out of reach, leading the pianist down Valentine’s muddy street into the woods waiting just beyond.

Sowly, people turned away from the window. The bustle of the crowd picked back up again, talk filling the space where the pianist’s song had been. “Heard ‘Lizabeth got up out of the grave,” Said a man at the table behind them, leaning close to his friend, and chuckled. “Ain’t so surprised - ma always said she’d be too stubborn for the dirt to hold her down, even when we was kids. How’s it workin’ for you?”

“Ain’t so bad,” Said his friend. “Get to talk to her again, and she still makes a damn good pie - you should come over, she’s been askin’ how you are. Li’l strange seein’ through her though, and I don’t like not feelin’ her properly in bed. S’like touchin’ air that’s gone solid, don’t get nothing back from her and I don’t she gets nothing from it neither.”

If anyone heard the howls, echoing from outside town, they didn’t show it.

“Jeez,” Said Lenny, twisting back around on his stool. “I thought vampires were supposed to be sophisticated. Didn’t know they brawled like you, Arthur.”

Arthur laughed. “If that were brawlin’ I’ll eat my damn hat. Was more like Sean and Karen,” Arthur said, smiling at Lenny's grimace, and called over the barman. “Can we get two beers, friend?”

“Sure,” The barman grunted, leaving off staring forlornly at the empty hole of his window to set two bottles down in front of them. “Don’t know why I bother repairin’ that window,” He said mournfully, leaning his hip against the counter. “Every night someone or something’s thrown through the goddamn thing, and if it’s not those two nightwalkers it’s someone startin’ a fight.” The barman scratched his moustache. “Maybe I oughta take the wall away, leave it open.”

Arthur took a swig of his drink. “Reckon you’re askin’ for more trouble leavin’ an open hole in your wall than you are having a window,” Arthur said. “And more drafts, too.”

He nudged Lenny while the barman nodded thoughtfully, and the kid took a swig of his drink too, relaxing a little into his seat as he leaned on the bar. Out of place in a saloon, Lenny was; young and smooth-faced, hands gentle and soft as they wrapped around the neck of his bottle. Even more out of place as a werewolf’s friend; eyes on them both, on Arthur’s face and his teeth and his hands, but… not mean about it, at least. Curious more than anything - they looked away when Arthur met their gazes, and didn’t look back again.

Micah weighed heavy in his head, a swallowed growl a reflex against a man not even nearby to be growled at, but the night was for Lenny, to still his shaking fingers and smooth over the worry creasing his face. Arthur slung his arm around Lenny’s shoulders, squeezed him close a moment before he let him go.

“Just a drink, right Arthur?” Lenny said, and Arthur clinked bottles with him.

“Sure,” He agreed amiably, taking another swig. “Just a drink.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have accidentally made Valentine into a very weird town.


	10. Chapter 10

“You alive there Arthur?”

“Charles,” Arthur mumbled around a tongue that tasted like a mouthful of carrion and a saloon floor, and winced at the pain blasting like a gunshot through his brains. “Do me a favour? Make sure I _ain’t_ no more.”

“I’m not going to kill you over a hangover,” Charles said, amusement curling low beneath his voice, bastard, and Arthur turned his face into the grass with a whine scraping raw through his throat.

His brains were bashed to pulp inside his head, blood beating against the inside of his skull and harsh, _blinding_ sunlight boiling it through his eyes. He pressed a hand over his face, wincing as camp stirred to life; Sean’s yapping laugh high and grating against his skull, John’s rasping chuckle a kind of grating all on its own. Bill loudly slurping coffee, Hosea rustling the morning paper, Dutch striking a match for a cigar whose smoke drifted on the breeze, acrid and sticking in his throat, miss Grimshaw rousing the girls, Reverend _singing_ ; familiar, _awful_ sound hammering hot and aching against the inside of his eye.

He really oughta remember he wasn’t no hot-blooded young fool no more, two decades strong and wild with the freedom being at Dutch’s heels brought him. “Heartless, you are - y’ain’t even givin’ a dyin’ man an easy way out.”

Charles toed Arthur’s ankle. He snorted. “You’re still complaining,” He said, “So I think the diagnosis isn’t so dire. Come on,” He said, and grabbed Arthur’s hand, dragged him up against the roiling of his guts, “Up you get, you old fool. Don’t know why you like sleeping in the horses’ hay so much. Don’t make me carry you, Arthur - come on.” Arthur growled into Charles’ shoulder, stumbled with a whine rasping against the back of his throat as his brains hit the inside of his eyes again. “What did you and Lenny _do_?” Charles asked, and the amusement beneath his voice was a little fainter.

Arthur didn’t know, and frankly he didn’t want to - it was embarrassment enough to remember that the night had started light, nice and easy talking business over beer, and then someone too deep in his cups kept talking, then _they_ got too deep in their cups, and Arthur walked in on the same couple twice who may have both been Lenny at some point, and as was usual when Arthur started drinking the law showed up and he hightailed it to the woods, and wasn’t quite sure how he made it home.

And he may have eaten something raw and newly butchered from Pearson’s wagon because he was hungry, too, though he wasn’t so sure about that neither.

“Well,” Charles said, “Whatever it is you’ve done a number on yourself. And to that O’Driscoll - he’s frightened half to death.”

Another pulse of sunlight stabbed through his head, and Arthur pawed at Charles’ belt, grabbing for the shotgun because Arthur wasn’t a good man, wasn’t a kind man, but if Charles was going to be even worse than him then Arthur would do _himself_ the kindness of killing himself the way his carcass clearly preferred.

He’d laugh how easy it was for Charles to shoulder him to his other arm so the shotgun was out of reach if Arthur didn’t suspect his guts would come up if he did. He pressed his face into Charles’ shirt with a whine that came from deep in his chest, close to a groan. It was soft and worn against his face. Smelled like Charles, like the clean growing kind of dirt and river-water. Soap that wasn't perfumed, the shared scent of the gang ingrained so deep there was no washing it out. Gunsmoke.

Charles patted his back, palm smoothing up and down his spine. “Easy there, Arthur,” Charles said, unfairly softly, “Easy cowboy, come on. Let’s get you to a proper bed.”

He pressed his forehead harder into Charles’ shoulder, arms around his middle, heavy and loose as a bag of meat in Charles’ hold as he stumbled obediently along. “Killin’ me’d be quicker,” He mumbled. “I’d make you a decent rug for sure. Good money in rugs. Or a coat. Comfy like. Warm - ’s gonna rain soon. You need one. Deserve one, I’unno.”

Amiably, Charles patted his hand. “I’m sure you’d make for a very comfortable coat of mine,” He said agreeably, and dumped him into his cot, pulling off his boots and dropping them at the end of his bed, reaching for his gunbelt. Arthur shoved him off, rolled to his side with a groan.

“Dinner first,” He mumbled, pressing his nose into his pillow and breathing deep. Charles’ hand settled heavy and warm over his ankle, thick fingers curled over delicate tendon and bone. “How dare you? Gotta be woo-ed - woo’d? Gotta be _wooed_. Proper like. Gentlemanly.” Arthur wasn't a gentleman, though - or a gentle man. Charles was, but Charles was good in ways Arthur had always admired but never been able to cultivate in himself; soft at his centre and steel beneath that, give in his belly and strength in his chest, his arms. A brute with brains in his head and a heart in his chest, who shared Dutch's dream of a home away from the long arm of the government, but without the meanness that sometimes came with it.

Arthur licked his bitter teeth with a grimace, and shoved his head under his arms. Charles would make a fine man for a lucky lady someday, though Arthur hoped that lady was as sturdy-built as Charles because lord help her otherwise if they had kids. They'd prolly come out already built like li'l bulls.

Charles rubbed his thumb over the bones of Arthur's ankle jabbing through his skin, down into the hollow behind the tendon. He patted -once, twice, and stood, calluses rasping against skin and hair as his fingers caught and dragged. “Alright Arthur,” He agreed, and left; dimly, Arthur listened to him unroll the flaps of his tent and tie them down, and usher John and Sean away.

-:-

Arthur felt a bit better by the time he woke at noon, a little less like a carcass jerked along on a piece of string, and after drinking a cup of coffee and making his way well into a second Arthur even felt vaguely alive. Enough to go looking for Charles, at least, and Arthur tipped his hat low over his eyes as he hovered around the scout fire, watching Charles sharpen his knife. “Sorry,” He mumbled, “‘Bout this mornin’. If I said somethin’, or did somethin’, or...” Arthur’s mouth twisted, and he shrugged, resting his hand on his belt. “‘M sorry, is all; I get friendly when I’m drunk, more handsy than I oughta be. Talkative - you know, speakin’ nonsense, or more’n my usual nonsense anyway. Jus’, don’t you mind whatever came outta my mouth, or anythin’ I did - I’m an idiot.”

“S’alright,” Charles said, easy as that.

“Well, alright then,” Arthur said, and left before he embarrassed himself.

He went to find Lenny, then; to make sure the kid was alright after his night. He was sprawled out across his bedroll looking like he’d been dragged through every bit of countryside between camp and Valentine, but he was alive and whole and in a few hours probably no worse for wear. Arthur spread a blanket across his back and let Lenny sleep it off, sharing a laughing glance with Hosea reading inside Dutch’s tent. He’d done the same when John was young, after a night by Arthur’s side where he finished Arthur’s drinks for him and ended up passed out and thrown over the back of Arthur’s horse.

The O’Driscoll tied to the dead tree behind Pearson’s wagon whimpered and whinged to himself while Arthur drank his third cup of coffee, dawdling in the cooking fire's warmth. He was lookin’ skinny; skeletal, really - he’d already been a skinny little thing when Arthur dragged him back to Colter, but he was certainly looking worse now. Hung like a bag of loose bones from the dead tree worn smooth and grey, eyes dark with exhausted bruising and gaunt hollows in his cheeks. A skinned rabbit of a man, limp and bleary and long-limbed; more like a horse spooked by the shadow of a passing cloud, kicking out at the grass brushing his fetlocks, than any of the spitting-furious snakes that usually followed Colm.

Held his words longer than Arthur thought he would - he talked a hell of a lot for a man hanging from a tree in an enemy camp, but he didn’t _say_ anything, in some coward’s brand of Dutch and Hosea’s empty talk when they spun yarns miles long during cons. Though where Dutch and Hosea kept theirs straight, the O’Driscoll was tangling himself tighter and tighter in his yarn. Wouldn’t be too long ‘fore he either strangled himself to death or talked to cut himself loose.

Or they killed him. Whichever came first.

Arthur smirked behind his tin cup, breathing in the steam. “Y’alright there boy?” He asked. “Didn’t do nothin’ to ya while I was drunk last night, did I?”

“W-what?” Said the O’Driscoll, glancing at him through blurry, wide doe-eyes, bags sagging dark and heavy beneath them. “No. No.”

“Shame.”

“S’just… s-somethin’ came outta the dark,” The boy whispered, trembling a little against the ropes. “Las’ night. _Huge_ \- tall as _you_ , all glowin’ eyes and _teeth_ \- s-so many _teeth_ , all flashin’ at me. D-di'n’t sound like no man, w-w-weren’t even s-speakin’ like a man, sounded like some fella gave a voice t-to meat! Jus’, _growlin’_ , an’ it ate a l-leg a somethin’, jus'-jus’ crunched through them bones.”

Arthur licked his lips, grinned at the O’Driscoll until he flinched from the flash of his wolf's teeth, real threat in the curl of his lips. “Yeah, I do tend to get hungry when I’m drunk. Surprised I didn’t go after you,” Arthur added thoughtfully, and grinned wider at the way the O’Driscoll whimpered and scrabbled, heels kicking through the dirt as he pressed himself flat to his tree, terror piss-sour and acrid on the air. He licked his lips, let his voice rasp through his chest like a growl, like that low, rumbling wolf's threat itching in his throat. “You're livin’ meat, ain't'chu? Bet them bones of yours’re much nicer than a li’l deer's leg.”

The O’Driscoll’s eyes flashed, rolling white with terror like a spooked horse. He pressed back hard against the tree, torn somewhere between leaning as far away from Arthur and his monster’s teeth and staring monster’s eyes as he could, and keeping his throat tucked safely under his bearded chin. “Y-You wouldn’,” He warbled, shrill. Yelping as he slipped on a tree root, scrabbling to stay upright. “You s-said you would’n - an’... an’ y-you need me, I-I know about Colm!”

“You think you’re the only one’a Colm’s men who can squeal, boy?” Arthur said, almost kindly. The O’Driscoll whimpered, gaze skittering away from Arthur’s eyes, tendons taut in his throat as he panted, short and shallow.

Satisfied, Arthur settled back, sipping from his tin cup as he turned to look out over the burnt forest spreading dark and lifeless from the base of the Overlook’s cliff, soil charred black as Arthur’s coffee and the trees burned dead and bare. But animals still picked their way through the ash, deer and pronghorn nibbling at the new growth starting to push their way through. Even a bull elk, far too far east and south but head held high under a magnificent crown, bending his head to delicately nibble some shoots at the untouched edges of the forest. A wild horse, head high and wary.

“Aw, you don’t gotta worry none,” Arthur said, chuckling. “If anyone’s gonna gnaw on them bones of yours it’ll be Hosea, the rest of us’ll get the scraps. If there’ll be any, anyway - not much to you, is there? Even less now." Not that any of them ever would - killing men was one thing, but eating them was another and Arthur'd put down a few who thought a bite or two wouldn't hurt in his time, in the gang and out of it - but the O'Driscoll didn't need to know that. "And ain’t no one gonna so much as nibble at you ‘till Dutch gets tired of waiting for you to talk to us honest. Though I’d watch out for Mrs Adler - I get the feelin’ she’s got a mean streak, like a cougar whose tail’s been stepped on. Might not wait 'till then.”

“Sh-she’s already tried to kill me,” The O’Driscoll said mournfully.

“Can’t exactly blame her,” Arthur told him cheerfully, tossing the cold coffee in his cup at the O’Driscoll’s feet. “I want to, and I don’t even gotta listen to you whine when I’m peelin’ potatoes all day. Hey,” Arthur said, turning on the boy with a grin that showed teeth, “When she starts makin’ a move on you, you make sure you scream _real_ loud, huh? All of us could do with a laugh right about now.”

The O’Driscoll sagged with a sigh that caught in his throat, a whine faint in the back of his mouth as he stared at the ground scuffed and worn bare of grass beneath his feet. He stank worse than Bill or the Reverend, sour with lingering fear and misery.

Cheered, Arthur put his cup back in his satchel. “You have fun there, O’Driscoll,” He said in farewell, and made his way to the pasture where Kelpie glowed through the trees by Taima’s side, silvery and pretty under the cloudy sky. He ought to thank whoever brought her back, or give her a few mints and a whole lot of petting if she made her way home on her own. He tacked her up, murmured apologies for taking her away from her friend when she tossed her head with a whicker, ears pinned back. “I’m headin’ out!” He called as he swung himself into the saddle. “Shouldn’t be gone more’n a day or two!”

Hopefully, he thought, though there wasn’t much room for hope where Micah was concerned, getting him back would be easier than getting Sean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And lo, while in prison Micah saw the error of his ways and became a decent, hardworking member of the gang, and they all settled nice and safe out West, and he lived a long, happy life not being a complete and utter twat.


	11. Chapter 11

Fresh from rescuing one goddamn idiot, he was off to save another, Arthur thought as he set off for Strawberry. Could be worse; could be better, too, and his mood soured with sky as Arthur spurred Kelpie into a brisk canter, turning her nose to the forest beyond the Dakota river rolling steel-grey across its bed and the clouds gathering dark and bruisey with the storm heavy on the wind.

She tossed her head with a whicker, ears back, tail flicking, and Arthur smoothed a hand down her neck, murmured low and soothing even if he shared a growl in his throat; it wasn’t often Dutch’s leash felt like a chain, like a rope around his neck yanked tight, but he felt its weight now.

“Y’alright,” He soothed, soft as he bent over the saddle horn and dragged his knuckles across her coat, smoothing away her irritation as best he could. If two of them were annoyed they’d never get anywhere, and Kelpie had more sense to her than Arthur did. “‘S alright, girl. Nasty storm for savin’ a nasty feller, but he’s a member of the gang and Dutch asked us to. Ain’t gonna be able to do it without you.” Kelpie settled, shaking her head with a snort, ears still pinned. “Yeah,” Arthur agreed, and settled back upright, hand loose at his side, “And I wish it could be done without me, too.”

Campfire smoke trailed high in the air, drifting on the stiff wind as Arthur followed the winding paths through West Elizabeth’s dense forest; camps of half a dozen men with green coats or ties flashed through the trees, shaggy pelts with long-toed paws lolling out of the back of wagons or held up to acclaim. Arthur circled wide, passed through Riggs station and made a note in his journal as he watered Kelpie at Hawks Eye Creek’s narrow, winding stream.

 _O’Driscolls strong in West Elizabeth_ , He wrote for Dutch, and roughed out a map of where the camps were.

For himself he scratched out the lower slopes of Mount Shann and the distant rocky borders of Big Valley, and the clouds hanging low over the pines swaying anxiously. _I am off to rescue that wild fool Micah, who has got himself caught in Strawberry making a nuisance of himself. It is nearly certain that I will regret this_.

-:-

He swung by the stable to see his Walker and pick up some supplies for Kelpie sometime after sundown, and the boy seemed happy enough to see him; leaning over the gate of his stall to nose Arthur’s pockets and hands, pushing his head against Arthur’s palm as he was petted, though Arthur didn’t feel too bad leaving him behind. A jailbreak was no sort of work for him, when he flinched and murmured at the distant rolls of thunder.

“Phew,” Whistled the stableowner, somewhere between awed and unsettled, as he shielded his eyes and looked over the stable’s roof. “Real nasty weather on its way, eh? Hope you ain’t passing through, because I would not want to be out in that when it hits.”

“Comin’ to bail my brother out of jail,” Arthur said, nose wrinkled as he rolled the lie around his mouth.

The stableowner clucked with a grimace of sympathy. “He that wolf that got caught in that street brawl the other day?” He said, and Arthur nodded. “Well, good luck - you’ll need all the help you can get this time. Even apart from the, uh…” He gestured at Arthur’s eyes, their faint yellow-green shine through the gathering gloom. “Sheriff ain’t too pleased at the ruckus, and the mayor’s feathers ain’t unruffled neither. They’re lookin’ to hang ‘em all - set an example, and suchlike. Apparently there’s been too much roughhousing for the mayor’s likin’, and the sheriff don’t wanna lose his job which is fair enough, but seems an awful drastic way to go ‘bout things. That feller that killed a man deserves what's comin' to him, mind. Poor Agnes.”

Arthur swung himself up into the saddle, and Kelpie pawed the mud underfoot. “How long they got?”

“You ain’t heard?” The stableowner said, glancing over. “The hanging’s tomorrow.”

“Shit.”

The stableowner’s mouth thinned in sympathy. “Yup,” He agreed. “Sheriff’ll’ve long gone home by now, and he don’t appreciate visitors so I’d advise against knockin’ on any doors, but I heard from the deputy as he was re-shoeing his gelding the other day they’ll be hanged in the afternoon, so you got a little bit of time if you wanna plead his case. Other’n ‘at, well - I hope your mama don’t mind a corpse comin’ home.”

Arthur growled low in his chest, a huff scraping harsh and short through his nose. “With all the trouble I gotta go through ‘cause of him I don’t mind bringing home a corpse myself,” He said, and the stableowner laughed. Arthur wheeled Kelpie towards the road, tipping his hat farewell - said, “You take care.”

Strawberry was a charming enough place, in a way city folk might call 'rustic' in that it had grown closely around the waterwheel turning in the stream like a clump of mushrooms and had no wires connecting it to the outside world that Arthur could see, all the wooden bridges well worn and the houses clean but lived in, grass growing dense and springy beside the worn-in roads. The jail loomed at the top of the town, looking down from on high at the top of the slope that backed against the cliffs that surrounded the town, and just beside it towered the Welcome Centre where a sign swinging on the porch said _VACANCIES_.

The storm hung low over Strawberry as Arthur walked its deserted mud streets, dense and dark and soon to break, distant thunder rumbling through the ground. Maybe an hour before it broke, Arthur supposed when he sniffed the wind just starting to rush over the tops of the trees, and a few more before midnight. Arthur untacked Kelpie and looped rope around her head in a makeshift halter, hitched her outside the Welcome Centre with enough slack to let her crop at the dense grass beside the road, and hauled her tack up the steps.

The clerk at the counter looked up from his book when Arthur shouldered his way inside, saddle on his hip, and made for the chairs sat in front of the fireplace. “Mind if I stay here a few hours, friend?” Arthur asked, while the clerk blinked at him owlishly.

It was the kind of place that wasn’t so fancy as it supposed it was, or wanted to be; the stone fireplace was big and crackling with tamed fire that hissed and spat sullenly, the wooden floor worn smooth and greyish where people often walked, the banister made of smoothed wooden sticks - leather chairs and plush rugs and fancy wallpaper putting on an air of sophistication it didn’t quite have, the dark wood and the stuffed bear rearing and roaring, frozen, in the corner like the furnishings of a rich man’s study, only without quite knowing how to pull it off enough to make it work.

But the wood was rich and dark, the wallpaper crisp and clean, the bear rearing from its stand narrow-footed and reaching out with long-toed, hand-like paws. It were no poor man’s bed and board, neither.

Carefully, the clerk tucked a little ribbon into the spine of his book, between the pages, and closed it, setting it down on the counter. His thick moustache twisted a little, bushy brows pinched together behind his spectacles. “There _are_ rooms available upstairs,” He said, bemused. “And at very… _reasonable_ prices, too.”

“Oh, I ain’t spending the night,” Arthur told him, setting down the saddle and sinking into the chair with a groan. The bit of Kelpie’s bridle glinted in the firelight where it hung by the headpiece from the saddle horn, the saddle sturdy beneath Arthur’s heels as he put his feet up and settled back into the plush leather chair. “Just restin’ a little while is all, I’ll be movin’ on soon enough. Won’t cause you no trouble to let me sit here, will it?”

The clerk’s small eyes tightened a little at their corners, fingers twisting a little anxiously. “Well...” Said the clerk, slowly opening his book, “You let me know if you change your mind... sir.”

Arthur tipped his hat over his face and folded his hands over his belly, fingers loosely knitted together; dozed, but didn’t sleep as the warmth of the crackling fire washed through him, warming his feet and loosening his bones, easing familiar aches and pains. A few scars itched and prickled with the coming storm, the long slashes of a cougar’s claws on his shoulder shrunk tight with the cold. The woodsmoke nearly drowned out the smell of anyone who’d stepped across the threshold ground down into the wooden floor, familiar from a hundred thousand campfires.

An hour drifted by, the fire crackling in the hearth beneath the soft rustle of the clerk turning worn pages in his book; light flashed across the floor, through the windows, thunder pealed, and rain drummed hard against the roof, the walls - tapping loudly on the windows. The clerk jumped with a soft gasp, resettled with a sullen huff - Arthur shifted a little more comfortably in his seat. He passed another hour in the chair while the storm raged, and another, and another.

The clerk was asleep when Arthur stood and gathered his things, slumped in a chair against the wall, book dangling loose from his fingers. Arthur shrugged on a leather jacket and shouldered open the door as quietly as he could. The driving rain beat hard against his back, drumming against his hat until its brim dripped, and Kelpie bumped her nose against the pocket over his chest when Arthur murmured a greeting. She burred, leaning into his petting hand, when he threw the saddle over her back, ears pricked forward, pawing the ground. Rain-slick and shining like a star with the sheen it put in her coat, Arthur curled his fingers gently over the bridge of her nose and tugged her close, murmuring into her face so only she could hear.

“Easy now,” Arthur soothed. "My girl. Ain't you a pretty thing, huh?" She pressed close into his chest. "Yeah," He murmured fondly, and left her with a pat on her neck to tighten the girth around her belly, fitted the bridle on her head and looped the reins around the saddle horn. “We’ll be off soon, girl,” He told her, and - loudly - added, “Just gotta collect a goddamn moron from a jail cell!”

“Morgan!” Micah shouted over the storm, rain beating the muddy street, and Arthur let Kelpie go with one last pat and ambled around the side of the Welcome Center, up to the stone foundations of the jail where Micah pushed his face through the criss-crossing iron bars. He clutched them, white-knuckled, as he gazed up with wide, glowing wolf’s eyes. “ _Ohh_ , just the man I wanted to see!”

“That so?” Asked Arthur idly, hooking his thumbs in his belt, and _tch_ -ed with saccharin sympathy. “You ain’t lookin’ so good there. Ain’t havin’ fun?”

Annoyance flashed hot through Micah’s pale, wide eyes, lips curling back over jagged teeth before he forced them closed again. A cut over his cheek blushed hot and raw, left eye bruised and swollen dark, the two last fingers of his right hand refusing to bend as he gripped the jail bars tight. “You gotta help me, Morgan,” He said, and whatever it was in his throat he struggled to swallow it must have been pride because he added, “Please.”

“I don’t gotta do nothin’ of the sort,” Said Arthur cheerfully, leaning up against the side of the jail, foot braced against the wall. He grinned, let his voice settle back low in his chest where it rumbled gruff and coarse and harsh as a growl. “All these months,” He said, low, “I’ve had to listen to your bluster, and now I got a chance to watch you be silenced; Dutch don’t ever need to know that I _let_ you swing, and I don’t waste a bullet puttin’ you down, and the gang loses some goddamn hotheaded _fool_ too dumb to not go yellow on the simplest job.”

Micah hissed through his bared teeth, shaking the iron bars. “ _Please_ , Arthur,” He said, and there was real panic in his eyes gone wide enough to show slivers of the whites. “I-... I always looked up to you.”

“Well that was your first mistake right there,” Arthur scoffed.

"Oi!" Someone called; Arthur peered down into Micah's cell. A man in a worn black coat sat on the bed against the wall looked over, face scrunched up sullenly as his head jerked up to stare right back. "You comin' to get that pillock over there?" He demanded, and spat on the floor. He didn't wait for an answer, just nodded and grumbled, "Aye. Goddamn mutts - ain't even got the courtesy to do a jailbreak at a proper hour." He spat again.

Micah whirled around with a snarl, shoulders half-up like he was raising hackles, teeth and eyes flashing. "You wanna get out of this goddamn cell or not?" He said, and raised his fist, "'Cause I can make sure you ain't getting out 'till a 'reasonable hour' _just fine_." The man settled back against his wall with a mutter, ankle resting on his knee, and cautiously Micah eased a little.

"Hey, I ain't promised anythin' yet."

“C’mon, Morgan,” Wheedled Micah, reedy and pitiful, as he turned back, head ducking meekly. His hands slipped around the wet iron bars, face slick and sickly with the rain splattering down from the sky dark as his bruises as he pressed up against them. He licked his thin lips, panting short and shallow, the stink of him sour with genuine fear. “You ain’t so heartless to leave me here after I’ve _begged_ , are you? Dutch needs us, Morgan.”

Arthur settled back against the wall a moment. Strawberry’s lights had gone out, the streets dim and dark even to a werewolf’s eyes with the lightless sky overhead, moon and stars hidden behind the clouds flashing with lightning; empty, bare of people - only Arthur fool enough to be out in the driving rain that dripped from the brim of his worn old hat. No one to catch sight of them until they were long gone. Micah's eyes shone yellow-green in the dim light, blonde hair hanging lank around his face; head low between his shoulders, spine curved, a whine in his chest - cringing, begging. Wolf-scent in his skin, underneath the blood and knife-steel and gunmetal. Their scent; the gang's.

Dutch’s leash, heavy around his throat, tugged. Arthur sighed, stepped away from the wall, and settled his bandanna around his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I resent the fact that even in fanfiction I need to rescue Micah almost as much as I'm looking forward to the chapter where he gets the living shit beaten out of him.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual warning - this time slightly more graphic violence, so stop when Micah aims a pistol and pick up when Arthur leaves Maddy's house and calls for Kelpie, unless you want to read Micah getting thrown around so pick up when Micah starts yelling for Skinny.

Dynamite was no good in the wet - Arthur was half sure it was soaked useless even tucked away in his saddlebags - but he cast a look around, and the steam donkey abandoned nearby didn’t care about the weather and didn’t look all that beat up, neither, so if worst came to worst and the contraption didn’t work then he could just break a lock or a window and sneak in. Though that was a lot more risky, if someone happened to glance out of their window. Arthur tugged the donkey’s hook and cable over to Micah’s cell.

The bars criss-crossed over the little window, welded shut and mostly free of rust, too solid to be ripped to pieces. But the gaps between the bars were big enough to put the hook over and Micah, grinning, grabbed it and secured it on the middlemost gap, and stepped back up against the far end of his cell. “You best watch out,” He said, low and harsh and breathy-eager; moustache pulled back from his teeth in a grin, half-crouched, clawed hands clenching and unclenching as he quivered by the other bars. “That _mutt_ ’s gettin’ us out.”

Arthur grabbed the lever, growled, “I ain’t gettin’ _neither_ of you out if you don’t shut up!” Though he wasn’t so sure which of them he was threatening. Micah was the one he was really here for, he supposed, and Dutch’s leash tugged again.

He held still a moment, though - turning his head back and forth, pointing his ears as best he could when they weren’t wolf’s ears that could be swivelled. The rain beat wetly against the road and the fattened stream frothing white as it rushed across its stony bed, pattering against Arthur’s hat and ancient leather jacket. A few people shuffled about in their homes, thunder rolling through the sky right alongside flashes of lightning. He licked his lips.

There was no one around to see. But they’d sure as shit _hear_. “Alright, stand back,” He said, and grabbed the lever.

His feet slipped across the wet ground as he struggled against the lever, gears all gummed up by disuse, but Arthur put his weight against it and the lever groaned, and gave a little; gave a little more, and Arthur grunted as his feet slipped again. “Come _on_ , Morgan!” Micah hissed, and Arthur cursed him - rolling thunder drowned him out, which was probably a good thing because miss Grimshaw had an uncanny knack for knowing whenever either of her boys cussed and she’d have probably heard otherwise - and clunked into place.

The engine hissed to life, winching in the cable, and Micah barked a laugh as it jerked taut, bowing the bars. Arthur stepped back - the wall blew out, iron screeching, stone clattering and thudding into the ground, and Micah bayed with delight, scrabbling through the hole with the man right on his heels, cackling right alongside him and scurrying off across the muddy road, hopping up onto a horse hitched along the main road and kicking it off and away into the dark, hooting and hollering beside Micah’s howling.

Houses crashed awake, grunts and shouts, clattering muffled behind walls - lights turned on in the windows.

“ _Ohh_ , Morgan!” Crowed Micah, head low, gripping Arthur’s shoulders tight as he panted sharp and shallow, half-laughing under his breath as he swayed, glowing eyes glittering in his shadowed face. “ _Morgan_! Oh, I owe you one!”

“You got that right,” Arthur grunted, and shoved a pistol into Micah's hand, glancing up at the lit windows. He grabbed Micah’s arm, yanked him over to Baylock who looked up with a burr, and Kelpie shifting anxiously nearby, ears flicking back and forth. “Now _come on_ , we gotta go _now_.”

Micah yanked himself free, slowly shaking his head, stepping _away_ \- Arthur jerked in a flinch as a few doors crashed open inside the nearest houses, and the rain drummed down and lightning flashed and Micah’s jagged wolf’s teeth glistened in his grinning mouth, the flat glow of his eyes glittering brighter than the rain slicking his skin and smoothing flat his hair. He hunched low in the middle of the road turning sharply deeper into Strawberry, pistol held tight.

The rain beat down, the howling of the wind as shrill as a coyote’s wail, and Micah’s lips pulled back further, eyes holding Arthur’s stare. He ran his thumb around the pistol’s grip, and he swayed in the dark and the rain, in the middle of Strawberry’s easternmost muddy street not a stone’s throw from the jail with its torn-out cell wall and the houses coming to life at Arthur’s back.

Micah shook his head, sodden hair clinging wetly to his cheek. “Oh I ain’t leavin’ cowpoke,” He said, eager and soft, growling high in his throat like a hunting hound. “Not yet,” And he raised his pistol, staring unblinking down the sight, eyes that wolf’s flat yellow-green shine in the dark cast by the heavy clouds hanging low and fat with the rain turning the road into slurry; another door crashed open, light glittering off the wet road and bright on Micah’s face, the whole goddamn town waking up - someone shouted, and Micah fired.

It probably should have surprised Arthur more, the heavy thud of a body hitting the house’s wooden deck behind him.

Shouts rang out with that _crack_ of gunfire, and Arthur flung himself down the road after Micah, stumbling across the mud and the wooden bridge slippery wet. “Are you outta your goddamn mind!” Arthur said, dropped down into cover behind some crates on the bridge when more front doors banged open. He meant it as a demand, but it didn’t quite come out that way and it didn’t land that way, neither.

Micah, in cover across from him on the other side of the bridge, spared him a grin as he laughed high and shrill like a coyote. “I gotta make a housecall Morgan!” He said, like it was perfectly _reasonable_ , like _Arthur_ was the goddamn madman for not wanting to shoot up a town for a _housecall_ in the middle of a jailbreak, and fired at some poor fool in his union suit raising a gun blindly in their direction - he dropped with a yell when Micah shot him in the gut. “Didn’t _exactly_ have the time before now!”

“A _housecall_! In the middle of all’a _this_!”

Arthur drew his revolver, shot a bullet into the leg of an old man hobbling up the road with a rifle - he dropped and didn’t get up, but he moaned and shouted, and Arthur dropped a few more men stumbling out into the storm, two and three into legs and one into an arm. They didn’t try to press - they weren’t lawmen.

Gunsmoke stung acrid in the back of Arthur’s mouth, ears ringing. Lost count of his bullets in firing wide, blind - burying themselves in worn wooden walls, splintering bridge railings and porch posts, and he cursed as he knocked out the cylinder of his revolver and fed more into it, while Micah kept firing, just as half-blindly. His bandana clung wet and itching to his face, catching on his stubble; rain in his eyes even under the wide brim of his hat, and his heart hammered in his throat and head and ears until he felt sick with the smell of hot gunmetal and blood and mud and the leash taut around his throat that kept him stumbling along in Micah’s wake.

Kept him from putting the last bullet in his revolver to better use in the back of Micah’s head.

They followed the road, firing into the dark; Micah’s careless aim sending bullets thudding into the ground and walls and people, and he grinned and swayed and scittered off, across the bridge and deeper to the far side of town where it was bordered by the stone cliff, and Arthur flung himself into cover behind a house beside him when more men poured out of houses, shouting for the sheriff and at the injured, peeling away to try to drag some of them out of the way, and at Arthur and Micah to give themselves up.

Arthur fired, four and five and he missed the sixth, and Micah killed five, only two of them with the grace to be outright. Gutshots, most of them. “Why in the _goddamn hell_ are you makin’ a housecall, Micah?” Arthur demanded.

“My guns, Morgan!” Micah shouted, over the _crack_ of his pistol and the splintering of the wooden wall under returned fire and the thudding roar in Arthur’s ears. “The only thing I care about is those guns!” And he grinned even wider, half-malice, and dashed down the road, over the bodies he’d left behind and up to one of the houses at its end; he hammered on the door, demanding, “Skinny! _Skinny_!”

The cylinder in Arthur’s revolver clicked as he spun the chamber to reload, hurriedly pressing in bullets as he peered around the side of the wall - horses thundered south down the far road and reared and shrieked as they were pulled to a stop, more men bristling with guns dismounting and gesturing over the townfolk left standing, clumping together as they yelled over the storm and Micah’s fist beating against the door.

One of the lawmen grabbed a townsman, demanded, “The _hell’s_ going on?” and the man answered, “That goddamn _dog’s_ been broken out!”

Arthur fired at their feet, and they scattered into cover. Micah’s _housecall_ er’s door opened a crack, and Micah shoved it wide - dragging out a portly man and shooting him clean through the head, snarling delight at the spray of blood splattering wet over the worn wooden porch. He shouldered his way inside the house, and under Micah’s baying cackle a woman screamed.

A few of the lawmen fired before Arthur could shove his way into the house after Micah - he was damned already for letting it go this far, but he sure as shit wasn’t going to let it go no further, and Arthur cursed as he fell back into cover, peering anxiously around the wall he was sheltering behind. 

“Oh, _hello_ ,” Micah crooned, muffled through the door and as loving as Arthur had ever heard him. “How I’ve missed you.” A shot cracked the air; the woman screamed again and, harsher, he hissed, “And _hello_ Maddy! Did you miss me?”

Arthur charged the door and shoved it open with his shoulder; it had been a nice house before Micah came charging in and left a bullet hole in the ceiling and the table and sofa upended in front of the fireplace. The woman curled up tighter in her corner on the floor, arms over her head, dark hair snarled around her tear-wet face. She whimpered as she caught the flash of Arthur’s eyes through the gloom of her home, the gleam of gunmetal as Micah admired his revolvers above her.

Micah looked up, smiling cheerfully as he spread his arms in welcome. “Morgan!” He said, “Nice of you to join us! Maddy and I were just about to have a little _chat_.”

Arthur shoved him out of the way, towards the door. “That’s _enough_ ,” He said, and the low threat behind the command made his voice drag out of his chest, rough and harsh. Micah’s face twisted, brows furrowed in half-fury. “You got your guns. _Go_ , ‘fore I make you go.”

Micah’s nose wrinkled, lips curling back over his jagged teeth, as he lifted his chin. His Adam’s apple bobbed along his throat in a swallow, and his growl rattled clear through the space between them in answering threat. “You ain’t gonna make me do _nothin,_ ” He said, high and laughing. His nails folded up into claws, tapping idly against his revolver’s grip; the clacking echoed hollowly. “You ain’t Dutch or that old man Hosea.”

Arthur grabbed Micah by the throat and shoved him to the ground, flipped him to his belly and yanked his wrist up high between the blades of his shoulders, shoving those goddamn guns into the holsters on Micah’s hip one handed.

Micah fought against the hold, kicking and biting and snarling, claws scraping across the wooden floor as he scrabbled, but Arthur was bigger and broader and he pressed his down on Micah’s wrist until the bones creaked, panted through the acrid gunsmoke thick in his throat and the terror sour in the air and the loathing burning his blood, hot in his jaws and bones and hands as he grabbed the back of Micah’s neck and shoved claws into the fleshy underside of his jaw.

The lawmen called to each other, holding position on the western side of town. The smell of house and home weighed heavy in Arthur’s mouth and nose, smothering and thick even under the rage burning out of Micah’s skin.

Arthur’s snarl scraped through his mouth and rattled in his throat and thundered in his chest - Micah kicked at Arthur’s leg, twisting against the hold and Arthur bore down, pressing in his claws. His toes burned with the ache of standing on them, crouched, spine arched as hackles pressed through his skin and bristled under his shirt, chest deepening with every breath, shins boiling as bone shrank and his feet lengthened, leather boots creaking.

But he held, kept his grip as his arms came loose from his shoulders and settled as wolf’s limbs, the tips of his shoulder blades rising up with the stretching of his ribs into a wolf’s narrow-chested withers. His face prickled in uneasy pain as he forced it flat and human, muscles clenched tight against the stretching bone. He held, still and unyielding as his bones stretched and shifted under his skin, claws pressing in under Micah's jaw, right at the top of his throat. Held, teeth bared in a threat Micah couldn't see, deaf and blind and _hurting_ with his blood burning with fury.

Maddy whimpered in her corner - Micah stilled, heartbeat thudding uneasily against Arthur’s callused fingertips.

“I’ve had enough of you,” Arthur said, soft and quiet, or as soft as the raw, wet scrape of his mangled voice would let it go; his hackles rose stiff and high along the back of his neck. “And the only reason I ain’t tearing out your throat is ‘cause Dutch asked me to save your sorry hide. So you’re gonna shut up, and _behave_ -” Arthur pressed his claws in for a moment, “-and you ain’t gettin’ off the back of my horse till we’re back at camp. Clear?”

Slowly, carefully, Micah nodded. Arthur bound his wrists behind his back just to be sure and dragged him up and across the floor by his bound arms, whistling for Kelpie as he left the woman in her corner. Kelpie shone in the low light as she skidded to a stop just in front of the porch, head high, ears flat, prancing in place as she whickered anxiously, and Arthur pressed his clawed hand gently to her shoulder after he threw Micah over her back, lashing him to the saddle.

“Come on, girl,” He said, and he swung himself into the saddle, wheeled her towards the lower bridge over the stream and the main road just beyond where shouts rang out, surprise and dismay and demands for horses. His claws flattened out into nails and his hackles melted back into his skin, though his shoulders took longer to settle, aching as they dragged back into place. “Brave girl,” Arthur crooned, and tapped his heels against her flanks. “We ain’t done yet, come on!” 

She leapt into a gallop, kicking up mud as she clattered over the wooden bridge, skidding as Arthur turned her to Strawberry’s entrance and they streaked out through the rain, under the sign over the road and into the trees. Shouts followed - gunshots ringing out under the distant rolls of thunder, horses shrieking as they were kicked into gallops right behind them, hoofbeats thudding against the ground. Arthur didn’t try to steer, just held onto his hat in one hand and the reins and saddlehorn in the other, bent low over Kelpie’s neck, and spurred her faster across the blurring ground.

Trees flashed past, rain biting cold against Arthur’s hands, and he closed his eyes as she twisted and turned and tore through West Elizabeth’s dense trees, sides heaving between his legs, grunting and panting and wailing in shared terror as wet ferns whipped her legs into going faster, making tighter turns, gunshots splintering spruce trunks and boulders; she skidded through the mud, but she kept her footing where a few horses on their heels lost theirs and crashed to the ground.

A bullet whistled past and she stumbled, gait faltering, tossing her head high as her eyes rolled white in their sockets. “Come on,” Arthur said, bending lower in the saddle as Micah yelped when another shot grazed his calf. “Come on, you’ve done real good, girl, real good; come on, nearly there, just a little longer.”

Bravely, shrieking in terror, Kelpie galloped on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haven't got too much to say about this chapter, really. Other than 'Micah can go fuck himself, and I really enjoyed making Arthur knock him around', but that's pretty much a given.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take this as a warning or an encouragement, there's **Micah abuse** in this one.
> 
> (Can you abuse Micah? Or is the word abuse only for something that can feel? He deserves it either way.)

They rode into camp at daybreak, the morning mist burning away under the distant sun rising over the Heartlands. Arthur hitched Kelpie at one of the posts and smoothed his palm down her neck as she panted, head hanging low as she steamed faintly.

“My girl,” He crooned softly, praise and pride a rumble just beneath. “Oh my girl. You did real good, _real_ good.” She burred for him, slick with rain and sweat, white with lather, and Arthur stroked The white stripe down her nose when she butted her face into his chest. “Oh, ain’t you somethin’?” He said, and the part of his heart that still belonged to Bodeceia twinged guiltily but, well - Arthur had never been all that inclined to turn away from the truth, and even less when he was proved right. Kelpie was no Bodeceia, not _yet_ , but she sure was a hell of a horse. “Good girl.”

Micah kicked a little on her back, huffing. “Are you _done_?” He demanded, “Or are you gonna keep sweet-talking this thing ‘till you’re buying it breakfast in the morning? Lemme off of it.”

Arthur took out a brush from his satchel and brushed out the worst of the sweat from Kelpie’s coat. She’d need a proper rubdown before he settled down and whiled away the day, but it would do for now. Just until he had the time to do it thoroughly, and Kelpie stood obediently still, shiny as new silver with the rain they’d left behind.

Hosea, sat at the table nearby, didn’t look up from his paper as Arthur carefully brushed out Kelpie’s coat a little more, just because she enjoyed it, but Arthur heard the crinkling of it as Hosea’s fingers relaxed a little. A few folk milled about as Arthur rounded his horse to work on her other side; Abigail and Miss Grimshaw over by the cooking fire nursing tin cups of coffee, Sean and Karen hovering by Dutch’s tent looking like they might pull up a chair, Bill a hulking mass of shaggy fur as he woke with a groan, a bear spilling out of his tent. He raised his head, bald face dark and leathery above his bearded jaw, brown eyes squinting through the sunlight spilling bright into camp.

Over Kelpie’s neck Arthur caught Abigail’s eye, and she nodded grimly and went to collect Jack where he was playing by the main fire, coaxing him over to her side and out into the trees surrounding camp, out of sight. Pearson, by his wagon, shuddered and turned to busying himself behind it.

“ _Morgan_ ,” Micah whined, low and grating. 

Arthur hauled Micah over his shoulder with a grunt and ambled over to Hosea’s table. “Dutch in?” He asked. “‘Cause I done what he asked, and I ain’t doing it again for this goddamn fool.”

“No,” Said Hosea, turning a page. The paper rustled. “He’s out scoping a lead, in Valentine - a stagecoach full of wealthy folk he heard some O’Driscolls might be hitting, heading out to Emerald Ranch soon. Why, something happen?”

“You could say that,” Arthur agreed, and dropped Micah on the ground, toeing him over onto his front. Hosea looked blandly over the top of his paper at Micah hissing and snarling and tugging fruitlessly at the ropes around his wrists. “ _This_ thing thought it was a good idea to shoot up the _whole goddamn town_ on our way out. Thought maybe Dutch woulda wanted to know, for when the law comes lookin’ for the moron."

“Fuck you, Morgan.”

Arthur thumbed the handle of his knife as he drew it from the sheath on his hip, and sliced neatly through the bindings on Micah’s wrists and ankles; Hosea’s lips thinned, pulled back to show a flash of a fang, fingers tightening on his paper until it creased. “That so?” He said, cold and flat, and watched Arthur haul Micah up onto his two feet and drag him over to Pearson’s wagon where the O’Driscoll on his tree was whimpering to himself.

“Sure,” Arthur told him tightly, and strengthened his grip around Micah’s arm as he wrenched against the hold and dragged his feet and bared his jagged yellowed teeth in threat. Miss Grimshaw, sipping her coffee, tutted at the scuff marks they were leaving through camp; Charles, by the main fire, watched placidly as he whittled. Arthur raised his chin, called, “Mrs Adler!” And, when she poked her head around the food wagon, arms wet to the elbows and potato in hand, he said, half friendly, “Micah here’s been real kind in relieving you of vegetable duty for the next few weeks, because he is a goddamn fool who ain’t gonna be trusted out on jobs till he learns the sense not to massacre a whole town just for his _guns_.”

Mrs Adler stared at him, with her shiny eyes and her face heavy with the hollow grief left inside her chest. “Okay,” She said, and her voice rasped worse than John’s, broke clean in half like someone had gutted her neat and clean up her belly and she wasn’t sure if she was grateful or angry she wasn’t dying from it. “Thank you mister Morgan.”

“Ain’t nothing,” Arthur said, a little more gently. She hadn’t done anything to deserve his temper.

Miss Grimshaw gathered her up and set about trying to find her some other busywork to keep her mind off her dead husband, while Micah kicked and squirmed and fumed uselessly. “I ain’t doin’ women’s work!” He spat, as Arthur shoved him towards the tub of vegetables. “You can’t ask me to do that!”

“It ain’t women’s work if I say it ain’t,” Arthur told him cheerfully, and scrubbed his palms against the knees of his ancient jeans, dusted himself off. Nothing to be done about the awful clammy damp against his skin but a change into dry clothes, but he’d beaten away the worst of Micah’s stink on him. “And I ain’t asking, neither, so the more you run your mouth the longer Pearson’ll be keeping you.”

“C’mon, Morgan,” Micah wheedled. “Hosea!”

“That’s three more weeks, right there.”

A growl rattled high in Micah’s throat, pushing up into a snarl as Arthur turned to the cooking fire for a cup of coffee, pale eyes glaring holes into the back of Arthur’s head. But there wasn’t too much he could actually do, without Dutch to fight in his corner and with Hosea pretending ignorance over at the table by the entrance to camp, and there weren’t too many others who were going to help; Sean cackled, yapping and loud like a dog, mouth open and curved upwards in a puppy grin, and Bill lay back down with a huff, and miss Grimshaw shared a laughing glance with Arthur, over by the women’s tent where she was patching some of Jack’s clothes with Mrs Adler.

Javier wasn’t even pretending at sympathy, sat with his guitar under his tree at the farthest edge of camp as he saluted mockingly.

Lenny, sidling up to the cooking fire with a camp repeater on his back, chuckled - half in relief, maybe in that Arthur’d come back safe, and maybe in that he didn’t have to worry he’d done something wrong, leaving Micah behind - and Micah rounded on him with a roar.

“And where was you!” He demanded, though too sharp to be a question, and his moustache bristled back from his teeth as he hunched low, stiff-legged, shoulders up like raised hackles as fur, as long and thin as his hair, hung down the sides of his neck. His claws curled up into his palms, and Lenny stepped back, a faint edge of sour fear under the O’Driscoll’s whimpering terror. “Leavin’ me to _rot_ , goddamn uppity darkie-”

Arthur decked him, half on instinct, and Micah stumbled back and snarled half-dazed and Arthur hit him again, just to be sure. And again for himself, and again for Lenny, and again mostly because it felt _good_ to put the nervous agitation sparking restlessness up and down his spine, grabbing Micah’s shirt collar in his fist and beating him bruised and bloody, snarl thundering through his chest and throat and the dusty ground under his feet.

Too many goddamn miles between camp and Strawberry, too many of them with the law on their heels, too many dead Micah had left behind and it felt _good_ , to bring down the arm of the gang’s law on him when Dutch had given him too many passes too often for things he’d’ve skinned the others for, things he’d skinned _Arthur_ for, the one and only time he caught Arthur killing a man for a handful of change and a bit of fun on a slow night in town. He’d striped Arthur raw and bleeding with a belt, blunt teeth bared, dark eyes shining bright as any werewolf’s in the firelight when he grabbed the nape of his neck and snarled the tenets of the code they lived by.

It wasn’t a belt, and it wasn’t claws and teeth and biting into the soft meat of Micah’s throat where blood thudded hot and loud against the skin the way _Arthur’s_ blood demanded, and there certainly weren’t any words between Arthur’s gritted, bared teeth, but there was Hosea’s tacit approval in the rustle of his paper as he turned a page, and that was enough.

More than enough, maybe, with Bill raising his snout to smell Micah’s blood on the wind and Karen joining her voice to Sean’s howl of delight.

Dutch had brought hell down on others who didn’t follow the code, or got Arthur to do it when he needed someone bigger, stronger, needed to make the point that he had that kind of command over his beasts; Sean had been a victim of it once, scars silvery from wolf Arthur’s teeth on the back of his neck, and Bill too, and John, and other folk come and gone, and wolves and bears and lions, and a man with spots in his skin who said he was a leopard and a striped woman a tiger, and a hyena woman Arthur’d had to kill because the lesson was never going to take.

Javier had never needed the lesson; he followed Dutch’s creed almost as closely as Arthur did, but maybe he’d seen it given out to too many other people to try to test it. He plucked an idle tune on his guitar, chuckling to himself.

Hosea turned another page, and lifted his head without looking over. “Arthur,” He said, as easy and friendly as he said hello in the mornings, steel under the soft trappings of an old man. “I think that’ll be enough.”

Arthur eased off, let Micah go. Hosea’s mouth curled to a smile when Sean whined, slow and indulgent; Arthur flexed his hand as best he could, knuckles split open and swelling, an ache through his arm all the way up to his shoulder. Blood thudded in his ears, running hot under his skin with the threat of changing shape and killing Micah anyway, but he breathed out too slow to be a sigh and let it lie.

He tasted ash in his mouth, satisfaction dry and hollow and tasteless, as he went about getting Kelpie settled in and the day’s chores done - stepping around Micah peeling vegetables as he hauled food sacks and water. But it was alright, when Hosea caught his arm and pressed an old pomade tin of ointment into his hands, nodding to Charles tacking up Taima at the hitching posts as he said, “Why don’t you take Silver Dollar out hunting? The two of you could do with a change of scenery.”

He clutched the tin tight enough his bruised knuckles ached more sharply, and said, “Alright,” With a gruffness he didn’t mean, but that was alright, too; Hosea patted Arthur’s shoulder, squeezing tight with something that wasn’t quite pride and wasn’t quite gratitude, but certainly wasn’t upset, and when Arthur led the tacked-up Turkoman over to the hitching posts Charles looked up from his seat in the saddle with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had a bit of trouble with this one, but I had fun. Was also going to half be Charles bonding, but the two halves got away from me so now they stand alone, because fuck it.
> 
> (Arthur has also 100% adopted Lenny as his, and no I'm not changing this headcanon of mine.)


	14. Chapter 14

They didn’t actually hunt. They set up camp on a clifftop in the middle of the Heartlands and Arthur shot birds from the sky with his varmint rifle, with Charles collecting them like he was a retriever dog and Arthur a man.

There was probably something to be said about that. Gentle Charles doing the retrieving while Arthur grumbled and growled to himself with his blue wolf’s eyes and wolf’s teeth cramped into his human mouth, sat on his ass firing at shadows flapping overhead. But they got a few good prairie chickens and pheasants stashed away on the horses’ saddles, so Arthur supposed Pearson ought to be happy enough.

The Heartlands whispered quietly to itself, hushed as the wind hissed through its short, dry grass and the sun shone blindingly on the pale stone of the cliffs and the buttes of Twin Stack Pass rising high. Silver Dollar grunted contentedly as he grazed by Taima’s side, and Arthur settled his elbows on his knees as he watched Charles plucking one of the pheasants, the head cut off and tossed away into the brush for a scavenger to find, the plump little body legs-up between Charles’ knees. Easy and practised, keeping the flight feathers for himself and letting the rest drift away down the cliff on the wind, baring the skin underneath for cooking - dark eyes intent behind the curtain of hair that fell across his face.

Arthur’s fingers itched for his pencil, but he pressed his palms flat to the tops of his thighs and sighed, turning his gaze to the fire flickering contentedly between them.

“You okay there Arthur?” Asked Charles, and there was interest in his voice, a note of honest concern, but… distance there, too; space to let Arthur keep his silence if that was what he wanted, and space to fill with whatever nonsense came into his head if _that_ was what he wanted instead.

Charles was not Hosea, or Dutch, or Miss Grimshaw, or Miss Bessie or Miss Annabelle, who had known him at his worst when he was fit to go feral and forget his human shape entirely. They were too close to give him that space, and maybe Charles was too distant not to - a few months knowing each other and fewer friends wasn’t much against some of the others in the gang - but it was…

It was nice that Charles had thought to, to let him speak or keep his silence as he wanted to, where John would have stubbornly worried at the bones of his thoughts like a dog. At least, nice enough that Arthur worked his jaw around some of the words he half-wanted to say, the scribblings he might put down in his journal - feeling out the shape of them in his mouth to see if they’d fit what he was thinking. Private words he’d have the time to mull over before he put his pen to paper, though maybe he ought to never bother because the words never sounded the way they should either way.

He didn’t want to lie, Charles didn’t deserve that - but he didn’t deserve Arthur’s frustrations and irritation and his temper either; worry a hard lump in the back of his throat rattling around an angry growl. Killing birds weren’t any kind of satisfaction against that of a proper fight, and his knuckles still hurt even as he smoothed ointment over their broken skin, and rage sat heavy in his chest, frothing and boiling and beating away at the inside of his head. And it certainly wasn’t as if any of it was going to be _new_ \- the whole goddamn camp had heard Arthur’s contempt - and, well...

There were more important things to be getting on with, than airing out a fool’s dusty head.

There were jobs to run and game to kill and meat to butcher, there was keeping order in camp and getting the lay of the land out of it for when they moved on, and there was keeping an eye out for good places to camp when they did. There was collecting seasoning herbs for miss Grimshaw and letting Abigail ‘borrow’ money to buy Jack some proper clothes, and getting the O’Driscoll tied up on the tree to talk. There was keeping the camp fund topped up so Dutch could grease some palms to get the law looking the other way when his beasts were sighted by the locals, and making sure Hosea’s herb stocks stayed high for his medicine, and keeping the Reverend from drinking himself to death, or at least making sure he didn’t leave behind a mess while he was on the way to it.

There was Charles, plucking a pheasant for cooking, with his round, kind face and dark, narrow eyes, and his endless patience in dealing with a sad, angry old mutt a wrong word away from killing a feller on the best of days.

Arthur licked his lips. “Kelpie didn’t drown him,” He said, and Charles’ rhythmic plucking stopped. Arthur rubbed the back of his neck, the long, fur-soft hairs rasping faintly beneath his fingers. “When we was crossing the Dakota river, down under the bridge at Bard’s Crossing. She didn’t drown Micah, though I don’t reckon we was deep enough for that - she weren’t even swimming. Or maybe ‘cause I was on her back too, she’s real good like that - real gentle wi’ me. I dunno.”

Charles continued his plucking. He grunted something that was almost a laugh. “Shame,” He said. “Might have saved you some trouble.”

“Letting him swing woulda done that,” Arthur muttered, “And it would’ve saved some folk in doin’ it.”

They stayed silent for a long while, long enough that the pheasant was plucked and gutted and roasting over the fire before Charles looked over, brows pinched close and low over his eyes. “What happened in Strawberry?” He asked, and it was almost bland - idle like they were housewives sharing stale gossip, all conversational like, like Hosea at a dinner party to the guests he was fleecing - but there was an edge there, underneath. Concern? For the gang, for himself caught with them? Arthur didn’t know. “It sounded… bad.”

A few coyotes, weaving through the grass far below their camp on the cliff edge, yipped and growled and called to each other, snapping and snarling half in play. A hawk circling high in the air, hovering on the wind or dipping his wings to swoop low and wide, shrieked high and piercing. Charles brushed some downy feathers from his lap and continued to work, broad fingers incongruous with their delicate touch as he started sorting the flight feathers he’d stored beside him.

Too nice a day for the mess he’d helped make, and there was a flippant answer Arthur could give - Charles had already heard the bare bones story back at camp - but Arthur swallowed it, and rubbed his hand over his mouth, scratchy scruff rough against his palm. “Dutch killed a girl back at Blackwater,” Arthur said. “In a real bad way. Shot a whole bunch of the law on our way out too. But… It was only one girl, you know?”

Arthur grimaced at himself. It sounded cruel, almost - like he didn’t care. It was a girl that should have never been killed, didn’t deserve to be shot and certainly didn’t deserve the way she died, wrong place at the wrong time with just the wrong person at Dutch’s side in a damn fool’s robbery, but he wasn’t going to lie, and Charles nodded like he understood, or at least like he was willing to listen to Arthur’s fool words some more.

It was one girl among dozens of people who just happened to get in the way, and better one girl than two, or five, or a whole town of innocent people.

“Micah wanted to make a housecall,” Arthur said. “Wanted his guns, and he shot up half the goddamn town to get them. Shot folk in the gut -” Charles’ nose wrinkled, and Arthur nodded grimly - it was a slow and certain way to die, ugly and cruel - “And killed some feller he used to run with, clear through the head. And the feller’d settled down since they was running together, his woman was in the house - Micah’d’ve shot her too, if I hadn’t tied his hands and dragged him outta there ‘fore he got the chance to.”

The coyotes howled. “I tried not to kill no one,” Arthur said. “Lawmen is one thing, but townsfolk? I ain’t shootin’ to kill them. But it don’t mean I didn’t kill none of them, from infection or summat. Don’t mean I did right shooting arms and legs, neither. Or covering for Micah while he shot ‘em dead on his… mad fool’s errand.”

Charles was watching him, when Arthur looked over - patient and calm, like Hosea. Like he had a hundred thousand years he could waste listening to Arthur run his mouth, and listen close enough to remember the words too. He was lovely in the sunshine, with his round face and kind eyes, skin glowing warm in the sunlight and his pale scar jagged and ugly across his cheek softened in the day. He was leaned close to listen, elbows on his knees and the bag of feathers hanging loose by the strings in his hand, blue shirt tight over the broad slope of his shoulders.

A face easy to air thoughts to, and Arthur said, “It don’t feel good, saving him from the gallows like saving Sean did. And I don’t-” He looked away from Charles’ gaze, stared at his hands in his lap, “-I… Did I do the right thing, Charles?”

Charles’s broad palm was warm when he reached over and let it rest on Arthur’s arm, up near the crook of his elbow and bleeding heat into the bone. “I don’t know,” He said, and his thumb brushed back and forth over Arthur’s old shirt, calluses rasping faintly over the weave. He breathed out, too slow and deep to be a sigh. “I’m sorry, I don't know. I'm not sure if there's even a right answer for you. But you thought to ask,” He added, and his mouth curled into a smile, fingers tightening, proud and pleased and warm enough heat crawled up the back of Arthur's neck like the prickling of fur growing in. “And that’s more than Micah will ever do.”

His teeth flashed in the sunlight as he licked his full lips, his thumb petting back and forth, calluses rasping over the hairs. Mouth pulled back in a smile harmless and soft and threatless, gaze flicking away from Arthur's eyes often enough it didn't feel like a threat. Arthur wanted-

He didn't know what he wanted. But there was an impulse there, vague and formless in his gut, that Charles must have seen; just like that he sat back, said, "Get some rest, Arthur - you look terrible."

Arthur didn't sketch Charles, stretched out on his back on his bedroll and safely sheltered inside three canvas walls; he was half afraid of what he'd put to paper if he did. He drew instead Micah, stood there in front of the woman Maddy as she cowered in her corner, admiring his revolvers, and the feral edges of his teeth as he bared them in a smile. The fall of Micah's greasy hair to his shoulders, slick with rain, and his narrow-eyed satisfaction. Drew Maddy's face, white under the blotches on her cheeks, shining wet with tears; dress all crumpled around her knees same as she was crumpled right along with it, her eyes shining bright with dawning terror.

 _Charles is a good man,_ He wrote, _And a better one than I will ever be, if he can stand to be kind when I make the mistake of putting words to my thoughts. He does not have to think to be good; I cannot help but to wonder if there was ever a time I didn't have to remind myself to be kind, even to those in the gang who I care for above everyone else._

_Micah is alive and well, more's the pity. A little worse for wear, not on account of the law's tender care but my own temper. Dutch will give me Hell, I am sure, but I am not too sad about what I have done to him - he deserved a Hell of a lot more than a thrashing. But in saving him so that I could give him a beating he left behind a lotta bodies in Strawberry, and I do not feel good about that even when Dutch would tell me that saving a brother is a very good thing indeed._

_Charles doesn't know either. Or says he doesn't, which is probably his kind way of saying I have made a terrible, terrible mistake in letting that godawful fool live, and I am just as bad for letting him kill all them folk even when I were not pulling the trigger. But he says he is proud that I am worrying about it at all. I do not know if I believe him, but Charles knows more about these matters so I will trust his judgement that I am not as bad a man as Micah just yet._ _Still, even if I am not all bad I feel I have done bad, saving Micah Bell and that other feller in the cell from the noose. _ _Maybe I have. Maybe I have done good, instead._ _Maybe I am too dumb to ever know._

_~~I wish I could have Charles' goodness, or his knowing of what is good~~ I wish that I didn't care to know._

-:-

He dreamed, that night. Of cedars and pines and the sweeping sky, and the pale glow of the sun hidden below the distant horizon. Of a homestead beneath the shadow of blue mountains, and the forest that bordered it, and the grass swaying in a gentle breeze. Of broad lakes and wide silvery rivers, and a homestead in the foothills. Of the bright full moon hanging low and full, and beasts slowly making their way home under its gaze; wolves and a hulking, lumbering bear; a grizzled old lynx and a fat little duck and a small family of dogs; whitetail doe proud and pretty and a nervous horse, a clever, sharp-eyed hawk and a skinny, sad old tomcat.

He dreamed of a bison, lowing quietly as it lingered at the back of the pack; coaxing, wanting, calling out. Bowing his head to a wolf and nuzzling, nudging, murmuring so gently as they rested their faces together. He dreamed of the crowned elk fallen further behind, and the coyote at his heels with his wagging tail and smiling, snarling mouth as snakes' hisses, dry and hollow as death, whispered through the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Just shag already.~~
> 
> Fuck it - I'm in pain in a minor injury ward waiting room because I sprained my foot on Saturday and now there's worryingly black bruising - have an early chapter.
> 
> EDIT  
> Turns out I actually fractured my foot, so I had to go back in today to get fitted for a boot. NHS, I love you, but it doesn't take four hours to tell me I fractured my foot.


	15. Chapter 15

Arthur held up a cup of coffee to his nose and breathed in the steam curling faintly from its top. It was bitter and burned in the back of his nose and mouth, but he had grown up on the smell of it, in as much as it was the part of his growing up that he cared to remember, sitting by Hosea’s feet a long-limbed not-quite-a-pup wolf as he woke himself up with his morning coffee, reading out loud from the newspaper. And then John had come along and sat himself by Hosea’s feet to listen too and added his greasy stink to the mix, but that smell wasn’t so easy to replicate as putting a percolator close to the coals of a campfire.

Dutch used to tuck his face close to Hosea’s, eyes closed as he breathed in like he could smell the scent of himself lingering on Hosea’s skin, until the gang got too big and he found his heart stolen by Annabelle and Hosea’s by Bessie. Still close, even then. Maybe closer, except when Hosea and miss Bessie left for Bessie’s homestead in the hills, far away from him and the gang, and he went more quiet in between the times they wintered there.

The sun rose, early with the spring, and curling mist hung low over the ground glowed pale in its light. Birds called, and the foxes shrieked, and an owl swooped low and silent through the lightening sky. A buck, young and proud, stalked through the short golden grass, chest puffed out and head high to show off his antlers; Arthur sketched him idly, the noble weight of his head and the puffs of breath from his nose, as he listened to Charles wake.

Not so much slow as lingering - even breaths catching and quickening, heart beating a little faster behind his ribs, but resting a little longer, loose and lax on his bedroll. Arthur scratched out a few tufts of grass by the buck’s feet and darkened the shadows over his face and flanks as Charles busied himself with waking properly, and he grunted thanks when Arthur handed him a cup of coffee as he dropped down beside the fire. He tilted the pages a little so Charles couldn’t see, but he seemed content enough to sip his drink and watch the buck bounding away into the brush, hair hanging loose around his face, spilling over his shoulders like ink.

Arthur dropped his gaze back to the pages of his journal, settled his fingertips in the faint creases left behind in the writing of yesterday’s entry. _Charles is a good man_ felt a little like hollow praise coming from a man like Arthur, but it wasn’t any less true so he rolled the words around his mouth until they clicked against his teeth loudly enough Charles glanced over.

“Thank you,” Arthur said, and Charles’ face stayed placid and calm; no flicker of surprise in his eyes, a disbelieving pull at the corner of his mouth like anyone else’s might have done. “For yesterday. I ain’t good company at the best of times, and you didn’t have’ta listen to some grumpy old dog try to make sense of his thoughts. ‘Specially not one who would’a beat Micah death if Hosea weren’t there.”

Charles shrugged, as easy and loose as he did anything, as if it was no skin off his back, to sit and listen and offer his own thoughts in return as readily and as practiced as he plucked a pheasant for roasting. “You needed to talk,” He said. “There’s no shame in that.”

“Ain’t _ashamed_ ,” Arthur said, as heat prickled across his cheeks.

“If ever there’s a man worth beating to death,” Said Charles, a wry little curl to his mouth, “It’s Micah. And I don’t think Hosea would have tried too hard to stop you killing him, or much he could do.”

Arthur snorted, leaned his elbows on his knees and looked into the fire as the dawn crept quietly across the Heartlands. “You ain’t never seen the old man angry.”

Not the kind of angry he got with Sean and Bill, spitting furious over them slacking off, but properly angry. The kind of angry that made him a wolf with pale gold fur stained silver white with age, stood slender and delicate as he bristled stiff-legged, tail held high over his back, lips pulled back from his teeth. The kind of angry that called Dutch’s beasts to his side so they could help kill a betrayer, roaring fury as he snapped through bone and wrenched out flesh, and left a mess Arthur helped miss Grimshaw clean up in the dust just outside camp.

Vaguely, Arthur wondered if he’d ever been that furious with Dutch. If he’d ever showed teeth when Dutch tried to coax Arthur close enough to stay with them, years and years before Arthur cared to remember when he was more wolf than boy and killed chickens to eat, and Dutch left out a bowl of leftovers for him every night. If he’d snarled and bit when Dutch succeeded and one morning found Arthur curled up under their wagon, growling low in his throat and braced to run. If he’d ever broken bones when years later Dutch plucked John like an underfed, dirty apple from a hangman’s tree and proudly dropped him down in the middle of camp.

But Arthur’s anger was close enough in its ugliness, if quicker to spark, that Charles had seen most of Hosea’s already, at least enough to recognise it if something drove Hosea there again. And Charles reminded Arthur of Hosea, sometimes - maybe Charles would recognise Hosea’s anger because it was his kind, too, and not just through Arthur’s vague imitation.

He shook his head, and tossed his cold coffee to the ground. The sun was warm on his shoulders, wind carrying the sharp smell of the morning chill. “We oughta get these to mister Pearson,” Arthur said, nudging one of the pheasants hanging from Silver Dollar’s saddle. “See if any of the others got any jobs to do.”

“Alright,” Said Charles, and downed the last of his coffee. “I’ll get the camp packed up, if you saddle the horses.”

-:-

That evening Arthur was cornered by Dutch as Arthur dropped off the last of the horses’ hay at the end of the day’s chores, sidling up casual as could be as Arthur dusted himself off. Though he’d at least waited a while before he decided to talk - spent most of the day with Hosea in his tent, side by side on the bed, heads tipped close to speak as privately as could be had in camp - so maybe Arthur wasn’t in so much trouble as he probably should have expected.

“Arthur!” Dutch boomed, arms wide in welcome as Arthur brushed away some hay clinging to his shirt. Brown Jack helpfully lipped at the pieces left behind, nibbling gently around the buttons where hay had gotten lodged. “Well done, son! You got Micah back!”

“More’s the pity,” Arthur mumbled, and gently pushed away Brown Jack’s broad head. Bill’s horse was as dumb and nosy and overly familiar as his rider, but at least he was much kinder about it and let himself be moved away. “Hullo Dutch. Hosea said you was scoping out some stagecoach in Valentine?”

Dutch’s face was drawn and tired as he drifted close through the pale dusk, the lingering daylight cast down from the light sky making him almost haggard; he leaned on one of the boulders with a sigh, hand resting on his hip, shoulders loose as he studied Arthur, squinting a little through the gloom of human eyes. The familiar smell of him under faint cologne even and steady, not blood-hot with any anger. Just Dutch, calm and implacable as he watched Arthur fend off the horses nosing close for pats and scratches and the mints he kept in his pocket that were just for fierce little Kelpie grazing with Taima on the other pasture.

Arthur settled on the boulder with him and watched over the camp as miss Grimshaw got everything in order for the night ahead, making sure the Reverend was settled comfortably on his side where he’d passed out on his bedroll, and Pearson was putting away his knives and cleavers, and all the tent flaps were secured and Jack put to bed despite his protests. Bill lumbered and crashed through the copse of trees at the entrance of camp, grunting and complaining, a bear raising his snout to the wind and huffing dismissively.

At the food wagon Micah snapped at Pearson as he was let loose from the vegetables for the day, until Pearson fled to the safety of the main fire where Uncle plucked the tune of a dirty little ditty on his banjo. Sean, skinny and long-limbed and floppy-eared, pushed his cold snout up Karen’s skirt just to make her squeal, and smiled his dumb puppy grin and wagged his tail even as his ears lowered against Karen’s berating.

“We’ve got time,” Said Dutch eventually, smoothing his moustache. “Ain’t leaving for a few more days, and I wanna know more about the O’Driscolls ‘round here first. But-” He held up his hand, “I’m not here to talk to you ‘bout those snakes of Colm’s.” Dutch lifted his chin, regarding Arthur from beneath half-lidded eyes. Arthur’s head dropped a little under the weight of his gaze. “Hosea said you and Micah had a little… _spat_ , after you brought him back. I want to know why.”

Arthur flexed his hand, raw skin pulling tight over his knuckles, joints cracking. A breath dragged along the back of his throat, a voiceless whine caught behind his teeth as he chewed on the words.

“Son,” Said Dutch, low.

“He shot up Strawberry on our way out,” Arthur told him, and watched the horses shuffle through the pasture as they grazed. “Didn’t need to - it was the middle of the night in a goddamn storm, no one was going to be fool enough to be out ‘cept us. I tore a hole in the cell wall, there was another feller in there with him who had the sense to grab a horse and run, only Micah wanted his goddamn guns from some other feller he used to run with, and didn’t care he killed half the town’s mensfolk to get ‘em.”

Restlessly, Arthur dragged the points of his claws over his jeans. Cringed at the rasping scrape of them, loud and harsh. “He woulda’ shot a woman just for the hell of it,” Arthur said, and his voice scraped worse than his claws over his jeans. “If I hadn’t dragged him home. And then I beat him.”

Not so far as even half to death like he deserved, but a harsh enough lesson all the same.

“And put him to work as Pearson’s scullery maid,” Said Dutch, and there was enough amusement bright under his voice that Arthur let his shoulders relax a little, let himself raise his head a little higher from where it had dropped under Dutch’s authority, even when Dutch’s jaw worked and he gently held the back of Arthur’s neck like he was a dog. Like he was feeling out the edge of a collar he had put there when Arthur was a stray newly tamed, wondering if he needed to give it a sharp tug to make a point.

Dutch’s grip tightened only a little, barely a warning, when he said, “You can’t go fighting folk in camp, son. I know,” Dutch added as Arthur opened his mouth, “That you ain’t particularly _fond_ of Micah, and he ain’t so fond of you. I know, I understand - but, son, I need you _stronger_ ’n that.”

Guiltily, Arthur curled in on himself under Dutch’s hold, showing throat and the harmless side of his face.

Dutch was human at the end of the day, for all the command he held over them that weren’t; and Hosea was older, now, than the wolf who had sometimes driven home his lessons with words and sometimes his teeth in an unruly pup’s scruff, made skinny and frail by old age and never a particularly strong man even when he was younger. Arthur was a wolf who was bigger and bulkier than most, stocky with muscle where most were lean, blunt-snouted and strong-jawed and heavy-boned; a peacekeeper, because he was the only one Dutch could trust to uphold gang law and had the strength to do it.

It was needed, the lesson - Micah had gone far too far in Strawberry and too many times before then, too - but Arthur wouldn’t give it to Micah again. Not without orders, and certainly not as far as Arthur himself had gone. Not to take him out of their line of work, neither, when their numbers were so far whittled down they couldn’t afford to lose guns on jobs.

Satisfied, Dutch let Arthur go and hooked a thumb on his belt, nodding thoughtfully to himself. “He’ll stay with Pearson for now,” He said, mostly to himself. “You made a mistake, son, but it ain’t one worth undermining you. But I’ll need him on the stagecoach job with you and Sean.”

There was a command there, under the dismissal, and Arthur sighed to himself as he let Dutch be and made his way to the stew pot where Micah was dishing up.

He looked ugly, Micah, or uglier’n usual at any rate; a blotchy mess of bruises and shallow, half-healed cuts, and he moved more stiff than usual, careful of his left side, though he didn’t let that stop his battered face from pulling back into as harmless a smile as Micah could make - a grimacing thing that held less of a baring of teeth than usual. He held himself low, head ducked a little, eyes turned politely away from Arthur’s. Gave a little ground.

All of it about as genuine as a fox playing dog in a henhouse, but that wasn’t harming anyone in the here and now, not like shooting folk in the gut with a borrowed pistol just to get his revolvers back, so Arthur let it be, and nodded to Micah, grunting something that might have been a greeting. He leaned on one hip, arms crossed over his chest, and sighed.

“Micah-”

“Listen, Morgan,” Micah held up his hands, palm out. Arthur let his mouth click shut. “I know,” Micah said, “You don’t like me. I’m… _new blood_ , and I ain’t exactly used to running with other werewolves, and whatever Bill is.” Despite himself Arthur snorted - Bill was a grizzly, but about as far from being a real one as Arthur was human if he could stand to live with others long enough to be both in the army and a gang. Studying Arthur’s face, gaze just on the edge of threat, Micah said, “But I just wanted to say ‘I’m sorry’.”

Carefully, Arthur leaned back on his heels and raised his chin a little, scenting the air. Micah didn’t smell like a lie, like the shiver of anxiety that usually followed one or the nervousness that came with being studied after telling it. He smelled like gunpowder and blood and wolf, like old gunmetal and the clinging shadow of the gang’s mixed scent in his clothes, not half so strong as it should have been.

He was either genuine or a damn good liar, and Micah would never admit to at least one of those.

“What’re you sorry for?” Arthur said, bland and even, careful to keep the accusation from his voice.

Micah’s gaze shifted, fingers flinching, and he stood up straight, hands dropping. “For Strawberry,” He said, promptly enough. “I can admit my mistakes, Morgan, and I know that Strawberry was an awful big mistake. There’s easier ways of getting my guns back, I can see that.”

“Mmm,” Arthur murmured, and let his own arms drop from his chest. “You ain’t getting out of vegetable duty so easy as that,” He said, and a snarl flashed across Micah’s face, there and gone so quick Arthur didn’t bother to bristle at it. “But Dutch wants you with me and Sean on this stagecoach job he’s cookin’ up.” Holding Micah’s pale eyes, Arthur leaned in, and he showed teeth when he said, low and scraping through his chest and throat, “This is your last chance, Micah; you step outta line, you don’t follow orders, you go crazy and start killin’ folk that don’t need no killing, I’ll shoot you like a rabid dog and be done wit’ you.”

Grinning, eyes flashing yellow-green through the dark, Micah put his hand over his heart. “ _Arthur_ ,” He crooned, “I ain't the kinda feller to make the same mistake twice - I will be on my best behaviour.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for how late this chapter is; part of it is that I wasn't sure if I wanted more Dutch or more Micah (so fuck it, both), and part of it is that I've been going over the fic as a whole adding in a few bits here and there. Nothing major, although chapter 2 now describes Arthur's wolf form as more than just 'brown' and 'wolf'. He's now officially a 'bigger than most' brown wolf.
> 
> And yes, that is all the description Arthur gets until this chapter. I don't even remember why I skipped over it in the early chapters. Probably just didn't think about it.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've made another few changes to earlier chapters - the first one and the ninth one especially - and I figured I'd save people time and list them here.
> 
> Poor bean's been put through the wringer, and Arthur is now missing a piece of his tail, has a bullet hole in his ear, and has some pretty ugly scarring along his side.

Dutch sent Arthur out each night to stalk the Heartlands, finding the best ambush points and the quickest route to Hosea’s contact in Emerald Ranch and how quiet the roads would be, to keep folk from stumbling across a robbery and running to Valentine for the law. And Arthur went, and found out what he wanted, and more besides; O’Driscolls thick in the hills, at least three or four camps that Arthur had seen, and small clumps of them along the cliffs and mesas that bordered the roads.

Micah slipped away once or twice over the days, but he always came back to camp with more money than he’d left with and split it according to the rules, and his chores got done and he didn’t get into the sort of trouble he needed Arthur to get him out of again, so Arthur said nothing about it to Dutch.

The days were mostly quiet, with Charles, Micah, and Sean ordered to rest for the long night ahead, though Charles was always quiet. Which suited most everyone; the vegetables got chopped even in the dark and Pearson woke to a water-filled tub full of them come morning, Sean stopped getting under miss Grimshaw’s feet, and Arthur got to spend most of the days asleep, except for when Dutch or Hosea or miss Grimshaw poked him awake to deal with Bill, who wasn’t exactly pleased he was being cut out of a job Dutch needed beasts for.

“Oh it ain’t fair!” He complained, at length, beer bottle swinging from his hand as Javier _hmm_ -ed disinterest and John looked at Abigail for a rescue she refused to give, busying herself with Jack instead. John should have known better - day drinking with Bill usually ended in tears. “I _always_ get left out of these things!”

“No you don’t,” Arthur told him, dragging Bill’s thick arm over his shoulders and heaving him to his feet. “Dutch just needs them that can run on this one, in case the coach bolts and we gotta run it down.”

Bill spluttered, hanging unhelpfully at Arthur’s side, feet dragging through the dirt. “Grizzlies can run!” He protested, loudly. “A-and we run a hell of a lot faster’n wolves!”

“Yeah,” Arthur agreed. “I know. But grizzlies don’t keep that speed up long. Not like we can. You remember that stripey cat woman from India? Dutch never took her on these kinda jobs neither. _But_ ,” He said when Bill opened his mouth, beard bristling indignantly, “When Dutch needs summat bigger’n a wolf, and don’t need ‘em to run long, he knows where to go, don’t he?” He dragged Bill along a little further. “He takes you out on plenty a’ jobs where he needs somethin’ scarier’n a mangy old wolf, don’t he?”

Arthur dumped him on his bedroll, drink in Bill’s bottle sloshing over his chest and face, though Bill hardly seemed to notice, nodding thoughtfully. Or as thoughtful as Bill ever did. “Yeah,” He slurred, “Yeah, he do.”

Charles sat with him, too, in those spaces in between the nights when Arthur was woken up and couldn’t quite get back to sleep, and when Charles was already up. Asking about wolves and bears and big cats, and how so many of them came to rest in Dutch’s shadow. About hunting as a beast, four-footed and long-limbed and with a mouth like a beartrap, and the scents in the air, lingering on the wind or painted across the ground. About Arthur, and the hole in his ear and the scarring along his flank and the inch or so taken from his tail, the missing years before his two decades with Dutch and Hosea.

There wasn’t much to tell, so Arthur told. Mostly. Charles listened, quiet and attentive, and Arthur talked. About running down deer and rabbits, the thrill of leaping over the ground with Hosea who’d been a gold wolf then and a younger Dutch galloping alongside them on his horse, whoop mixing with their howl. About the hunters who had mistaken Arthur and Hosea for normal wolves, and barely missed their shot. About all the fights with other cursed beasts who’d found a home with Dutch’s family but thought they needed proving their place in it, and that Arthur had lost the last inch of his tail to one so long ago he’d lived without it a hell of a lot longer than he had with it.

About finding out the hard way why wolves, even werewolves, didn’t go against anything bigger or stronger than a buck alone. If Charles knew that Arthur was hiding the real reason _why_ he’d squared up against a boar twice his size and only survived being gored half to death because Dutch found him just in time, he was kind enough not to mention it.

-:-

“Everyone!” Dutch called as the evening rolled in on a cool breeze, the promise of summer realised in the bright leaves rustling on the trees. He stalked like a shadow across the grass worn short in camp, dark hat and dark, velvety coat and dark boots, bandana a shock of red around his throat; arms and voice raised as he called them. “We’re heading out soon, I want to be at the Twin Stacks before sundown. I’ll explain the plan there. Arthur, Sean, Micah! Get changed! Charles get your guns - we ain’t killin’ nobody, but we ain’t getting caught unawares, neither.”

Charles nodded, but his shotgun was already on his hip and Taima was tacked and loosely hitched by The Count at the posts. He leaned against Arthur’s wagon instead, watching Micah slink away into the dark and Sean strip right down where he was in the middle of camp, swaying and rolling his hips to make the girls at the poker table laugh and whistle at him.

Sitting down on his rickety old bed, Arthur toed off his worn old boots and set his hat down on the small table beside him, undoing the buttons of his shirt. “You think it’s a good idea?” Said Charles, arms crossed across his broad chest. “Robbing the O’Driscolls? And so close to Valentine, too.”

Arthur shrugged, pushing buttons out of their holes over his chest. “I dunno,” Arthur told him, as honestly as he could. “It ain’t so close that even if we’re careful we’ll get the law on us, and it’s real easy to hide up in the heartlands if we gotta. Dutch says the coach won’t be too guarded on account of the rich feller being too impatient to get gone to hire more’n a shotgun in the driver’s seat, so I ain’t too worried about that. It’s the O’Driscolls what worries me.” 

In Dutch’s tent, on his bed, Hosea waved Dutch over. There was tightness at the corners of his eyes, in his grip on Dutch’s fine, dark coat when he reached out and caught him, but his smile was real and he pressed his forehead gently to Dutch’s, hand on his shoulder and cupped gently around the back of his head. Dutch’s own hands settled carefully over Hosea’s cheeks, his jaw, the sides of his throat where it had been bared as Hosea stretched up to meet him. Whatever he murmured into the space between them made Dutch’s shoulders go loose, made him press a kiss to the corner of Hosea’s mouth.

They stayed locked together for a long while, speaking together in that shared, silent language they had made, Dutch’s broad palms framing Hosea’s face and Hosea’s fingers buried into the dense curls at the back of Dutch’s head. “We’ll be fine, old man,” Dutch said, soft into the hollow of Hosea’s cheek. “This ain’t any more difficult than Arthur’s first robbery with us.”

“I know,” Said Hosea. “Just… humour this nagging old wife of yours Dutch, and stay safe.”

“So what’s the story between Dutch and the O’Driscolls?” Charles asked, and there was an edge of concern there, beneath his voice, in the press of his fingers on his arms, the flash of the whites of his eyes as he looked at Arthur from their corners. “There’s a lot of bad blood on both sides, from what I’ve heard, and if it’s got _you_ worried...”

Arthur let his shirt drop from his shoulders and worked loose the buckle of his belt, the ancient, scratched brass shining brightly. There were a lot of answers Arthur could give from over a decade of the damn feud; of stealing scores and showing off, of scraps and all-out war, of wolves and bears and the rare cat whose skins rolled out of the backs of their wagons, and the beastmen in Dutch’s care who sat side by side with humans.

Of Colm’s brother whose bones lay in the stone and dust of the badlands and Annabelle whose bones twisted and warped inside her skin lay beneath the roots of an ancient oak, whose boughs gently swayed in the wind.

But that was for Dutch to tell, and Arthur kicked his jeans from his legs and dropped them on his bed.

“We’ve been fightin’ with ‘em for years,” Arthur said. “A blood feud, and a real nasty one too. Ain’t my place to say why, ‘cept that Colm is a nasty streak of piss, but his information’s good and he’s even better at getting men together for bigger jobs. It were before my time, mind, but Dutch worked with him now an’ then - nothin’ serious, just picking up a tip off now an’ then. But Colm’s brother?” Arthur scratched his throat, the short hairs rasping beneath the claws growing in. “Dutch’s always been fond of us, us shape changers - I reckon Hosea’s part of that. But, Colm’s brother was a hunter of our kind. Real famous for it, too.”

Charles swallowed. ”Ah,” He said.

Arthur nodded, mouth pressed thin as he crouched down in the dirt. “Yeah,” He agreed tightly, and breathed deep, pushing out his chest into a wolf’s deep, narrow ribcage, bones crunching and grinding as his shins shortened, feet lengthened, the narrow points of shoulder blades rising upright with the deepening of his chest into withers, muscle sliding beneath skin. “There was an argument, dunno what about, but Dutch shot Colm’s brother and Colm killed folks of Dutch’s, and we been feudin’ ever since.

His skin prickled with the fur growing in, skin stretching as his arms popped loose from their sockets; Arthur grunted, and caught himself on his paws, letting his head hang to stretch out his neck. “Nastiest sons of bitches you ever met, though - like snakes that been stepped on, but they don’t wait ‘till they been stepped on ‘fore they bite,” Arthur said, deeper and scraping with the stretching of his throat. “But they been lying low these past few weeks, so I reckon we ain’t in no trouble from them, neither.”

Arthur swallowed the last of his words as his snout pushed out into a muzzle, and he shook himself off, kicking absently at an itch behind his shoulder. Lazily, he wagged the shortened brush of his tail as he ambled up beside Charles, though he lifted it above his back and growled when Sean, slinking low across the ground, tongue lolling out of his smiling mouth, yipped and batted playfully at his face. Sean left to pester Karen, hopping up on his hind feet to drape his long arms over her shoulders and stick his nose in her ear, tail wagging so hard he nearly fell over.

Charles’ arms dropped from across his chest, fabric scraping over fabric; his fingers rested lightly over Arthur’s back, stroking back and forth. Snorting, Arthur leaned up against Charles’ leg and pressed his spine into Charles’ broad palm. He had nice hands, heavy as they smoothed Arthur’s ragged old pelt, thick fingers gentle as they traced the mass of scarring over his ribs, the gashes and slashes and scratches over his shoulders and the bites on the back of his neck.

The setting sun turned The Count gold as Dutch swung himself into the saddle, Taima delicate smoke as Charles lifted himself into hers. Sean, red as blood, bounced and yapped, biting at Arthur’s ears like that was going to get him more than a snap in return, and Micah, scarred and blond and narrow-snouted like a coyote, stalked out of the dark of the trees, jagged teeth flashing as his lips pulled back into a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two completely different versions of this chapter, one slightly more lighthearted than the other, but in the end I decided to stick to my original plan and cannibalise parts of the other chapter for later.
> 
> I'm splitting this one off of the robbery itself because Arthur's transformation took up a lot of space, but I'm keeping it because I enjoy it and I feel it's important. Plus, Charles has now, technically, seen Arthur naked for the first time since chapter 1 and 2, so I count that as a win. And it's actually on time today.


	17. Chapter 17

Dutch smoked by the crossroads just south of the oil fields, whose refinery’s grinding clanks and groanings shuddered through the still, cool air. The burning end of his cigar cast a faintly red glow across his face, The Count’s flanks as Dutch leaned on him; smoke drifting and trailing, spilling out from beneath the brim of his hat where it had collected. The moon rose, hanging full and bright in the dark sky, bright enough even for human eyes to see.

Across the road Charles stood patiently beside Taima, watching north as Dutch looked south between the rising pillars of Twin Stack pass. The air hung, still and heavy beneath the sky, but scents still carried up to the northernmost of the twin stacks where Arthur had stretched out across the stone; Charles, horse and river water and growing dirt and the lower note of nervousness, and when Arthur turned his nose there was Micah and Sean waiting on the southernmost stack, the smell of wolf and the gang and the short, dense grass of camp. Listened to the faint of edges of Sean’s excited, stuttering little whines as he panted, and Micah’s low growl warning him to settle.

Their eyes flashed through the shadows, Micah’s and Sean’s and Arthur’s; Charles picked out Arthur’s - catching his gaze, nodding grimly as he held his shotgun loose in his hand - but Arthur couldn’t see his.

A stagecoach rattled down the road curving around Citadel rock, lanterns swinging, grunting horses stinking sour with sweat as they kicked up a trail of dust beneath the shadows cast long by the bright moon. Arthur rose up on his feet and slunk low across the stone worn smooth beneath his paws, crouched down out of sight behind a dense bush, chest to the ground and feeling the rumble of thundering hooves - Micah and Sean stayed put, out of human sight, Sean red as blood against the pale ground as he shifted from side to side, claws scraping through the dirt. Dutch pulled his bandana around his mouth and nose, grinding out his cigar beneath his boot and unsheathing his revolver.

Arthur rose up onto his feet, peering carefully around the bush’s branches as Dutch stepped out into the middle of the road, arms raised high and wide in greeting. “Gentlemen!” Dutch called, cheerful with the guard’s gun snapping up to point at his face.

The driver, lean and old and weathered, frayed at his edges like old rope, yanked hard on the reins and dragged the horses to a stop. He sighed as he showed his empty palms to Charles aiming the shotgun at him, shaking his hanging head wearily; the horses stamped and whinnied anxiously, white with lather, heads held high as they scented the still air. Sean yipped, quiet enough it could have been a distant coyote, but the horses’ eyes rolled white at the terror of it, of the scent of Arthur watching from the side of the road.

“Oh,” Said Dutch, “What a fine evening we find ourselves in, hmm?” Eyes crinkling with the wide grin hidden behind his bandana, Dutch planted his hands on his hips and looked about, nodding at the mesas and sprawling half-wilds like he was pleased with a job well done, like he’d been the one who called the stone and pillars from the earth. Like he was stood at the entrance of his tent with Hosea by his side, hand resting gently on the back of Hosea’s neck and Hosea’s hand on his back, smiling at the family he had made. “You know, I didn’t think too much a’ this land when we first came down here, but I find it has grown on me somewhat. It must have been a real fine place, before folks settled here.”

“Whatddya want?” Demanded the guard, and his rifle aimed at Dutch’s face didn’t waver. His face twisted, and he jerked the gun off to the side. “Git,” He said, “If you know what’s good for you.”

Dutch’s dark eyes tightened with the spreading of his grin, palm resting on the handle of his revolver. “Well of course!” He said, and chuckled, tipping his head in a half-bow. “Once me and my friend there take what we like from this fine gentleman you’re protecting, we’ll be on our way and _you_ can safely go on yours.”

The gentleman inside the coach whimpered faintly, muffled through the heavy wood. The guard scoffed. “Or,” He said, “I can save myself the trouble and kill you, here and now. An’ your friend.”

Carefully, Dutch unholstered his revolver and let his hands hang loose by his side, fingers motioning. Arthur pushed his shoulder up against the bush and shoved it hard enough its leaves rattled, and he snarled, that ugly wet scrape of real threat in his throat made loud to carry further than it should have. On the southern stack Sean and Micah raised their voices into a hunting howl that Arthur joined, rising up onto his two back feet to meet the guard’s eyes as, carefully, he stepped his way over to Dutch’s side.

He pushed his head into Dutch’s petting hand as the guard paled, eyes wide and white like the horses’ as they reared and whickered and pulled against the traces. The mask hid Dutch’s baring of his blunt, human teeth in a smile, but Arthur showed his own, lips curved upwards in a grin, ears pressed flat to his skull, hackles risen along his back, and that was good enough as stringy Sean, red as blood, circled the coach, blue eyes flat and shining in the lamplight.

Micah, stalking through the brush, laughed, tongue hanging from his open jaws and grinning mouth, jagged teeth curved and wicked. “I don’t think that would be too wise, friend.” Said Dutch kindly, gently grabbing the loose skin of Arthur’s scruff and Arthur hung against the hold, letting his jaws hang open like he was about to bite. “See, my sons don’t take too kindly to them that hurts the hand that feeds. And this big old brute?” He shook Arthur, showed his weight and size and the _shape_ of that weight and size, with his deep chest and sturdy limbs and the hard, dense muscle beneath the ugly scars and brown fur. “Well.” Dutch smiled, slow and languid behind his mask, in his dark, lightless eyes flat and cold in the lamplight’s shine. ”He needs more feedin’ than most. Down, son.”

Obediently, Arthur dropped to all four paws as Dutch raised his gun and pointed the muzzle. The hammer clicked as Dutch pulled it back; Sean, still panting with that eager, stuttering whine, anxiety bleeding out through his fur and hanging tail wagging, passed the top of his head across the underside of Arthur’s chin. The kid had done well so far, though there hadn’t been a whole lot to do so far, so Arthur whuffed indulgently through the teeth he still bared the guard and driver and closed his mouth long enough to grunt approval.

Only Dutch had ever really learned to read the cursed beasts who sometimes walked as men. The driver and the gentleman and the guard wouldn’t ever guess at the nervousness Sean was trying to hide, and Sean’s tail rose a little with pride.

The guard’s gaze wavered, hands trembling around the rifle’s frame but its aim trained on Dutch’s head still steady, even under Arthur’s snarl and the driver’s whimper and Micah chuckling as he reared up and sniffed the air like he could taste the fear sour on the still air and Sean’s circling, red as a splash of blood against the dusty ground.

“We don’t want no harm to come to you,” Said Dutch, that low and soft cajoling. “We’ll take what we want from the feller in the coach, and then the three of you can be on your way, ain’t no harm done to nobody.” The rifle didn’t drop. Across the road Charles adjusted his grip on the shotgun. “How’s about a little show of faith, hmm? Heel, boys.”

Micah’s claws dragged across the stagecoach’s painted wood, hollow and grating, his ears folded back against the command, but he retreated a little ways away, watching from outside the glow of the lamps. Arthur turned his ears from Dutch’s sweet-talking to the guard - he’d heard it a thousand times before, the honesty that they didn’t come for violence and the promise that no one had to get hurt and the lie that Dutch’s wolves were starved, and so starved that the leash of his command was fragile, liable to snap.

The air hung still and didn’t carry scent far, though there wasn’t much that could be smelled under sour, cloying terror and the horses stamping anxiously at the ground. But sound did, the slow, grinding scrape and clanking of metal on metal from the oil refinery and the gentle whisper of Cumberland forest’s trees and the distant rumbling thunder of hooves against the ground, too many to be travellers and too lost in the forest’s depths to be the law.

Sean whined, ears pointed north with Arthur’s, fur bristling along his back and Arthur raised his hackles, flattened his ears. Barked, quiet and from deep in his chest; warning, without the urgency of a higher yelp.

“Mister Smith,” Dutch said, smooth and rich as butter as he held the guard’s stare, held his gun steady as he aimed at the guard’s broad face, “If you’d be so kind as to as to see what has disturbed them? I’m still having a...” Dutch’s finger tightened a little on the trigger, “... a _chat_ , with my new friend here.”

Charles raised binoculars to his eyes, full mouth pursing as he followed the road up to Cumberland Forest dark as a splash of ink on the horizon, stepping up beside Dutch. Arthur brushed his cheek and shoulder against Charles’ hip as he stalked over to Dutch’s other side, curling his tail over his back and snarling against the taste of horse and human and gunpowder on the wind, the bite of metal in the back of his mouth like blood. “O’Driscolls,” Charles said, mouth twisting grimly as Arthur huffed and dug claws into the ground. “Lots of them, at least ten. Maybe more.”

Sean whined, low in his throat as he looked to Arthur - not quite anxiety and not quite eagerness and not quite asking for a reassurance Arthur didn’t think he could give - and Arthur looked to Dutch who looked to the guard with a thoughtful shine in his eyes. The O’Driscoll horses thundered down the path, grunting and whickering as their riders kicked them into gallops.

The guard’s eyes narrowed at him, aim steadying, but he didn’t pull the trigger when Dutch shifted his own aim, pointing the muzzle of his revolver up at the starry sky stretching endless overhead. Dutch’s dark eyes mirrored the span of the sky, twinkling brightly as he leaned on his hip.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Dutch said, and the guard leaned back sharply in his seat, surprise in the narrowing of his suspicious squint, his hands tightening around his rifle. “Mister Smith! On your horse, and be ready boys. Driver, I’d hope to God you’re as good as the folks in town said you was if I were you.”

“What in the _hell_?” Hissed the guard, which Arthur supposed was fair - Dutch opened the coach door against the gentleman’s whimpering protests and braced himself at its entrance, holding on tight to the railing on the stagecoach’s roof as he leaned out, gun hanging loose and easy by his side as he tugged his bandana down his face, down around his throat, and fixed his mouth into a grinning baring of teeth, his snarl the low chuckle pushing up from deep in his chest like Arthur’s warning rumble.

Colm - gunmetal and gunpowder under the sickly sweetness of blood and whiskey, the slimy look to him a neat match for his stink - had always been a nasty streak of piss, so far as Arthur had ever known, but the years hadn’t treated him even half so kindly as they’d treated Dutch. Grey hair hung lank and matted around his face, eyes sunken deep into his sockets, bags hanging heavy from beneath them, glaring baleful and cruel from within the shadow of his hat, mouth twisted in some vague attempt at a smile.

He looked thin, atop his black mare as he yanked her down into a slow walk, sidling up with his hand loose at his hip all casual; shrunken in on himself in a way Arthur hadn’t ever thought Colm could shrink, like being chased east had done him even fewer favours than they had Dutch and them. Lines had carved even deeper around his mouth, his eyes, skin sagging in folds around his throat like a turkey’s and shrunk tight to the bones on his hands, his cheeks.

But the teeth he bared at Dutch were the same as ever, jagged and yellowed as he grinned, and Arthur bared his own for Dutch, curved and gleaming in the moonlight; a lethal threat more honest than the ones he'd given the guard.

“Well,” Said Dutch, leaning his hip on the coach’s doorframe, raising his gun to twirl it idly as the guard blinked like he wasn’t quite sure if he ought to trust things were real or not, and smiled blandly. “Fancy meetin’ you out this way! Been years, old friend. Though I cain’t rightly say they’ve been all that...” Dutch licked his lips, pulled back the corner of his mouth as he held Colm’s silvery gaze, “... _Kind_ to you.”

For a moment, Colm’s eyes flicked to Arthur’s. “It’s been a dog’s age, _friend,_ ” He said, and pulled hard on the reins to stop his horse, who snorted with the yanking of her chin into her throat, chewing on the bit with a snort and a stamp of her hind hooves. “And you ain’t changed a bit, have you?” He snorted, gaze sliding from Arthur to Sean to Micah. “Not at all,” He mused, “If you’re still picking up mutts.”

Arthur let his snarl build to a roar in his throat, but Dutch held his hand out _stay_ without looking so he let it die down just as soon as it had come, and decided to enjoy all of the guns Colm’s men pointed at him. All except two, right at the back, where two boys, stringy and gangly and with greasy curly hair hanging around their hollow-cheeked face, not much younger than Sean, smelled like fear and pointed their rifles to the sky.

Colm jerked his head to the side and the O’Driscolls fanned out behind him, twelve or so with Colm the thirteenth at the centre. Dutch’s eyes tightened at the corners, finger curling around the trigger of his revolver. “I always found them loyal,” He said, a faint bite beneath the smoothness, an edge like a knife’s. “And I’d sooner make a friend of them than a trophy. I ain’t ever known a trophy to save a man’s life.”

“Ain’t never known a trophy to maul a man, neither.”

The cylinder in Dutch’s revolver clicked as Dutch spun it idly with his thumb, and his eyes were savage when he said, “Nor a wolf their friend. But I known plenty of men who’d maul a werewolf, ain’t that right Colm?” Dutch licked his teeth, and Arthur caught Sean’s eye as he crouched low, long toes and curved, gleaming claws digging into the hard earth, fur and hackles bristling along his back. “And men who’ll kill men over their trophies.”

Colm drew his gun, slow and casual, Iron faintly rasping against leather, and it hung lax from his fingers as he spread his hands against the air, palms out. “It was just business, Dutch,” He said, weary. “I never liked my brother, anyhow.”

Dutch raised his revolver, staring down the sights. Colm reared back a little in the saddle, pale eyes widening, whites broad and bright with sudden terror as Dutch’s stayed dark, black with the shadows cast by the leaves and boughs of an ancient oak far out west. “But I liked Annabelle,” He said, and the crack of his gunshot echoed against the pale stone of the Heartland’s cliffs and mesas and the Twin Stacks rising high.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just putting this out, don't have anything to say. Today's been difficult.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning - **pretty graphic O'Driscoll murder** for most of this chapter.

Colm shouted with the gunshot to his shoulder, a bark of agony sharp and rough; curling over it, knuckles of his right fist pressed tight over the hole as it tightened around the handle of his gun, pale face going drawn and grey. The stagecoach horses reared and shrieked with fright, eyes rolling white, the O’Driscoll horses and The Count burring and milling uncertainly, Colm’s black mare kicking out.

But he stayed in the saddle. With gritted, yellow teeth bared and legs kicking tight around his horse’s barrel, Colm swaying in his seat with her startled lurch, but he stayed, and raised his gun.

The coach driver snapped the reins and the horses kicked into a gallop, Colm’s returned shot burying itself harmlessly into the coach wall, and he cursed himself blue as Dutch laughed, booming and cruel through the cool night, the swaying lantern’s light glittering in his dark eyes. The gentleman inside wailed his terror with the horses as they rattled across the Heartland’s dust and plains, the guard spinning around in his seat to look back. “The _hell_!” He cried, half a demand and mostly just plain baffled, but he raised his rifle and aimed at the O’Driscolls all the same.

“Friend,” Said Dutch, teeth glinting in his wide grin, “You ain’t even seen anythin’ yet!”

Dutch whistled, that imitation of a wolf’s high and clear hunting howl gone higher with the command to give chase, and Arthur lunged for the nearest O’Driscoll before they got their wits enough to gallop after the coach.

The bay horse reared with a scream, the O’Driscoll kicking at Arthur’s snout but his foot too tangled up in the stirrup to get far and Arthur bit deep into his leg, deeper, digging in his teeth into muscle and bone as he tore the man from the saddle and ripped out his throat when he thudded to the ground. Micah lunged after one and harried the others’ horses as Colm jerked on his mare’s reins and kicked off after Dutch, and Sean had grabbed another but his jaws locked instead around the O’Driscoll’s arm, teeth tearing through skin and shirtsleeves, when the man threw it up to shield his throat.

The man’s eyes were round and shiny and flat in the moonlight, teeth blunt as he bared them at Sean, writhing and kicking in Sean’s teeth, punching the side of his head, his face, grabbing desperately at Sean’s fur. Sean wrenched his arm to the side - dragged him across the ground, heels scuffing the dirt.

The feller yelled into the O’Driscoll’s dust, wet and plaintive and high in his throat like a yelp, like a whimper, as they left him behind, but it dribbled away when Arthur grabbed his arm for Sean and wrenched it to the side to let him have the kill. Only the two younger boys looked back.

Blood weighed heavy on Arthur’s tongue, his teeth, the skin and fur of his muzzle, the rich coppery stink cloying and thick in the back of his mouth and nose, soaked dark into the earth around the two dead O’Driscolls. It hung heavy in the air, on the acrid stink of terror and gunpowder and gunsmoke, the promise of it in the sharp cracks of distant gunshots. Sean’s eyes glowed eager-bright from it through the dark, tongue lolling through his bloody, open-mouthed puppy grin, teeth stained as red as his fur, as the mess of torn throats and savaged arm they’d ripped apart.

Arthur barked, quiet and from deep in his chest, not quite a command and not quite a certainty, and Sean obeyed as Arthur lunged after Dutch and the stagecoach; keeping pace as they flattened their ears against gunshots, the sharp _cracks_ of pistols and revolvers and the low thunderous boom of a shotgun, leaping over the ground, down the dusty road packed hard and across the arid grassland to make up lost time. He raised his ears at the shouts, words blurred on the air screaming past.

They passed a few bodies, crumpled down into the dust; they flashed by as Arthur threw his weight forward, claws digging into the dirt, tongue trailing from his mouth as he panted in gusts, muscle and bone burning inside his skin. Vague impressions of O’Driscoll green pale in the moonlight, of faces with wide, staring eyes, of a shotgun crater that ate away most of a man’s head.

Of the guard, curled up around a bloody hand pressed over his heart, clutching tight to his rifle as he dragged in a thin, shallow breath, glassy eyes turned up at the stars.

The handful of O’Driscolls left bracketed the coach either side, firing at Dutch on its left and Charles riding Taima on its right; Colm clung tight to his mare’s reins, the saddle horn, the bullet hole in his shoulder whose pain he gritted his teeth against as he spurred his horse onwards, shielded safely behind his men as Dutch fired and the driver whipped the coach horses faster and the gentleman inside wailed in terror.

“You didn’t need to kill my new friend the guard there, Colm!” Said Dutch, loud to be heard over the thundering of horses’ hooves and coyote shriek of Micah’s delighted baying as he snapped at the O’Driscoll’s heels. “We was just starting to get along!” Charles fired, a horse shrieking in terror at the enormous boom of it, and Arthur swerved around the body, Sean leaping over it. “But then you ain’t never had too much of a problem killing innocents.”

Colm grunted as his horse stumbled over a rock on the side of the road, face pale beneath the sweat shining in the moonlight. “Yeah?” He hissed, harsh and bitter as a rattler’s venom. “So I guess that girl you murdered on that Blackwater ferry weren’t innocent? Or were that some _other_ Dutch Van Der Linde I oughta know about?”

Dutch’s face tightened, eyes hard, frown made harsh by the shadows cast by the gunshot’s flare as he downed an O’Driscoll. The two young O’Driscolls trailing behind pulled hard on their horses’ reins to swerve around the body falling heavy from his horse, holding tight to their rifles like they were trying to hide the shake in their hands.

Delight pulled at Colm’s worn face, slow and sickly as poison as he held Dutch’s glare. “Y’aint so saintly as you think old friend,” He said.

“I never pretended I weren’t a sinner, Colm,” Said Dutch, and the teeth he bared in a grin gleamed like a wolf’s in his mouth, “But against you it don’t take much to be crowned a saint, neither.”

Arthur peeled off from Sean, and harried the O’Driscoll horses to keep them from getting a clear shot in; frightening them into flinching and leaping out of reach of his snapping jaws and lethal teeth while Dutch and Charles whittled their numbers down. He gulped air in between the thudding of his paws hitting the ground and the shock of it shuddering his bones and the drumming of his heartbeat in his ears, the acrid stink of terror and gunpowder thick in his mouth and nose as he fug his claws into grass and dirt that softened as the coach raced East down the road.

Colm slowed his mare and melted into the dark, the poor driver got his brains blown out and Dutch shouted an order, muffled and distant under the O’Driscoll’s ringing shots; it was Micah and Sean who obeyed, herding the coach horses into following the road, streaks of blond and blood running ahead, snapping and snarling and, dimly, Arthur thought Sean was going to be insufferable once they returned to camp, because he was doing well.

Charles rode steady, straight-backed on Taima, holding her steady even under gunfire, face as impassive and placid as if he were just on guard duty. Dutch hung out of the side of the coach, braced against its rattling over the wide wheel tracks dug deep into the road, whooping his great booming laugh.

The two young boys raised their rifles, trained on Dutch and Charles, greasy curly hair bouncing with the gait of their horses, thin faces drawn beneath their stubborn frown, fingers tightening on triggers; Arthur lunged, teeth scraping a horse’s foreleg, blood beading hot, and it screamed, twisted - kicking out and rearing up and leaping away and over him all at once, hooves slipping in the lush grass of the overflow, kicking up clumps of dirt and grass, and Arthur-

Arthur turned one way and the horse turned another, and it hurt, when the horse ran into him, knees and hooves thudding into his ribs and skull, knocking him into crashing into the dirt. It hurt worse when the horse landed on his leg, lay dazed on him, and he yelped before he could swallow it, high with the crushing agony in his bones and breathy with the air knocked out of him.

His ribs pulled against drawn breaths, and Arthur panted tightly, shallowly, into the ground where he’d let his head fall. Grass prickled his cheek, his lips, his tongue and teeth in his open mouth. A whine scraped faintly across the back of his throat, reedy and thin, and he watched the O’Driscoll boy raise himself up onto his elbows from where he’d been thrown, a smear against the blurry ground and distant hills. Greasy, curly hair hung around his hollow-cheeked, spotty face, scraggly hairs clinging stubbornly to his weak chin. His eyes met Arthur’s, and he flung himself back, scrabbling for his rifle. “Martin!” He called, and Arthur flattened his ears, cringing against his voice. “ _Martin_!”

Arthur curled his lip at him, a flash of fang more warning than a real threat, and pushed up to his forepaws as best he could, head hanging low against the tilting of the world beneath his feet. The boy eyed him, sprawled out on his back a little ways away, hands tight around his rifle, its trigger; muzzle aimed square at Arthur’s head.

Dennis, Arthur thought, staring back up the long length of the rifle at the boy, ears flattened. Dennis, who had owned brave Kelpie. Dennis whose brother would have killed him, if he was a wolf on the banks of the silvery Dakota.

Carefully, Arthur pulled against the weight of the horse across his leg - the horse stirred weakly, hooves scraping through the grass - and settled back. There was no reason not to; his leg wasn’t broken at least, and there was no harm in showing the boy he was stuck - he would’ve worked it out by the time he realised Arthur wasn’t standing properly, wasn’t getting his feet under him and lunging, wasn’t leaping away into the dark after Dutch whose calling whistles had taken on the harsh, high edge of panic, and Charles who had called for him outright.

Charles who was still calling, spurring Taima faster across the dense grass, hair streaming out like ink - ripping the bandanna from his face as he hauled Taima to a stop between Arthur and the O’Driscoll. Dennis was clever enough to scrabble to his feet, dashing away into the dark, and Charles didn’t press, just dismounted and caught Arthur’s face in his hands, dropping to his knees. His broad fingers dug deep into the dense fur around his face, combing from the short bristles of his cheeks to behind his ears, and Arthur leaned into it.

He had big hands, Charles. Big enough to hold the broad wedge of Arthur’s wolf head, where Mary’s had been too little and delicate to carry its weight and Eliza had never been close enough to him for Arthur to let her.

“Are you alright?” Charles murmured, soft as he passed his palm over the crown of Arthur’s skull, his forelegs. Feeling for breaks, and maybe a little bit for himself, too - a little thread of fear beneath the living heat of his scent. Arthur whuffed into his wrist, and Charles nodded, shifting to ease his arms under the horse’s neck, to startled and kicked out a little. “Come on, let’s get you out of there.”

-:-

Dutch hopped down from the coach before Micah and Sean had frightened the horses into rolling to a stop, head thrown back in his great booming laugh, and he clapped a hand to Charles’ shoulder as Charles dismounted Taima, grinning wide and bright. “Oh,” He said, “Oh, Mister Smith I ain’t had so much fun in a _long_ time.”

“ _Fun_!” Squeaked the gentleman, carefully making his own way out of the coach. Arthur eyed him as he limped up to Charles’ side, leaning on his hip to take weight from his sprained leg; the man was drawn, pale, as he trembled helplessly against the side of the coach he was leaning on, soft and plump from his face framed by an attempt at sideburns to his feet. But he was dressed well so far as Arthur could tell, or at least in as much as he was dressed _expensively_ with his grey fitted suit and crisp shirt and little gleaming spectacles balanced on his small nose. “How was that in any way _fun_?”

“You’re not dead,” Said Dutch cheerfully, rounding the coach to its back and taking a lockbreaker from his pocket. “You’re free to go catch that train and we’re even doin’ you the kindness of lettin’ you keep what money you got in your pockets. You got quite the story to tell, too, I reckon. And _I_ got to put a bullet in a man I would not be opposed to fillin’ with lead if ever I get the chance, and now I’ve got the money to feed my boys and our family back home. So I say today was plenty fun, wouldn’t you agree mister Smith?”

Charles, guiding Taima close and opening the flap of one the saddlebags, nodded serenely as Dutch started stowing away jewellery bags and wads of money and whatever else would sell. “Sure,” He said, as even and placid as the surface of a lake.

The gentleman watched Dutch rob him fretfully, wringing his hands, a wrinkle squeezed deep between his brows drawn tight together, but he didn’t step forward to stop him. Though maybe that was Micah, stretching out on his belly between them, tongue lolling from between his jagged, bloodied teeth as he panted, and Sean bouncing across the grass, rushing in at Arthur’s shoulders to bat and nip and leaping away before Arthur decided to bite more forcefully.

Dutch held up a silver locket and a photograph in a silver frame, pretty in the gentle moonlight and harsher light of the lamp. The photograph was an elderly woman, glaring stern and severe through the glass, hair pulled back into a bun so tight it looked like it hurt, but there were laugh lines around her eyes, too. Shallow dimples in her cheeks, shadows deep in the corners of her mouth from a lifetime pulling them back in a smile.

There was another photograph in the locket, when Dutch showed Arthur; a younger woman, as round and plump and well-dressed as the feller they were robbing, not especially pretty but nice enough, Arthur supposed, with the fall of her wavy hair around her gentle face.

The gentleman whimpered faintly, clutching helplessly at the air. “Please,” He said, and shrank back against the side of the coach when Micah snarled, claws flexing into the ground as he licked his teeth. “They’re the only things of theirs I’ve got left.”

“Hmm,” Dutch murmured, idly turning over the silver frame, thumbing the case of the locket.

Arthur shrugged when Dutch turned to him; either would feed the gang well, if Seamus was as good and honest as Hosea said he was - maybe for longer, if flesh and blood werewolves growling in Dutch’s shadow made him a little _more_ honest in his offers. The saddlebags either side of Taima’s spotted rump were hanging heavy already, though, and they’d already collected a score of wadded bills and jewellery bags. They had enough, more than that, maybe, as Dutch grinned, eyes glittering, blood thudding through the veins of his throat, scent bright with the thrill of one-upping Colm.

Carefully, Dutch took his knife and pried up the photographs, offering them to the feller as he dropped the locket and frame into Taima’s saddlebag. The man blinked, eyes wide, jaw hanging loose, as he clutched the photographs tight to his chest. He opened and shut his mouth a few times, voice strangled stillborn behind his teeth, but Dutch had already opened the coach door for Arthur, Sean, and Micah to hop inside, and climbed up into the driver’s seat, urging the horses into a gentle trot towards Emerald Ranch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies, this chapter _really_ didn't want to be written. Doesn't help I'm back at uni, and starting my dissertation, so expect the update schedule to be even more rough than it has been. That's not to say I'm abandoning this work, but depending on how hectic things get I may go on hiatus after Christmas, possibly as long as January until May.
> 
> (Interesting fact about this chapter though; in a very, very early draft - so early it was before I worked out a basic plan for the story and was just putting ideas down - Arthur was going to get run over by one of the stagecoach wheels.)


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As part of the unplanned hiatus I was on, I've made a few changes to the fic. It's not a very major overhaul, mostly just some wording changes and a few added details here and there, but I figure I should explain the big one all the same.
> 
> It's not a secret that the ending of this fic is the gang getting to settle on a ranch, that hasn't changed. What _has_ changed is where that ranch is going to be, because I feel the new one would be better than what I'd first planned, so I've gone back to earlier chapters to change some descriptions to match the new ranch location. Also, some of the dream animals have changed too - a tomcat is replacing the raccoon, and there's probably one or two others I've forgotten. Like I said, nothing too major, but that's why Arthur's dreams are a little different to how they were.

Spring bled into summer while Arthur wasn’t looking, the trees heavy with grown leaves and the grass swaying tall and proud from the sunshine and rain. The Dakota river, winding its way through the valley below camp, stopped smelling of meltwater and the winter ice lingering high in the mountains, and carried instead the scent of foreign dirt and stone.

They didn’t move on, though; they didn’t need to. Valentine’s locals didn’t side-eye the girls anymore whenever they were dropped off to buy supplies. Sheriff Malloy said hello whenever Arthur dropped in for bounty work. Hosea made good money off of the law-abiding folks, swindling them on a harmless health elixir that helped but probably didn’t heal, rolling in regular as clockwork with Abigail and Jack and Arthur the faithful hound, the scars on his skin explained away in some daring adventure where Arthur saved Hosea’s life who saved Athur’s with his concoctions.

Sometimes, Arthur dreamed. Mostly, he dreamed of the usual memories he had always preferred not to remember, the ones that got him up and circling camp on a patrol he didn't need to do; of nights as wolves cramped in a one-room house in the middle of town, hiding curled up between the cupboards and the walls as as his mother fought his father for him, all flashing teeth and claws and blood splashing against the floor; of the one time he had killed for fun, because he was angry and bored, and Dutch had thrashed him raw deeper than the welts in his skin; of a she-wolf he met in a saloon, gold and proud, their son they had made by mistake because Arthur couldn't help but miss Mary, and the two white crosses he had stumbled over years later.

And sometimes, Arthur dreamed of blueish mountains beneath the endless span of the sky and forests that stretched from edge to edge of the world. Of a little ranch with a big homestead and bigger barn and many smaller homes, and the animals who walked towards it - wolves and whitetail doe, a fat little duck and a nervous horse and a small family of dogs, a lumbering bear and a grizzled old lynx, a sad old tomcat and a hawk. He dreamed of a bison, lowing steadily through the dark of the setting sun for a wolf trailing behind, and he dreamed of an elk, crowned and proud, and the vipers around its feet.

He dreamed of a grey coyote hanging with its jaws around the elk’s throat, and another with wagging tail and reassuring whines at its heels.

-:-

Hosea took him hunting, up to O'Creagh's run on the trail of some monster bear. Supposedly - mostly, Hosea made Arthur make camp and tend the fire, and shared stories of he and Miss Bessie when they were in the area years and years and years ago all the while. His eyes warmed with their smile's crease, silver fur stained fire-bright as he stretched out beside the campfire's warmth, as he raised his muzzle to the sky and wheezed a laugh at Arthur chasing rabbits like he was a child again, or as close to a child as Arthur had ever been. But they ate well when Hosea tracked a herd of deer and sent Arthur to kill, and Hosea seemed in good spirits, so he supposed it didn't matter in the end.

His weight was slight against Arthur's side - shivering with his thin, smooth fur useless against the cold - when Arthur slept beside him each night, bracketing him between the bulk of his shoulder and the fire. Hosea huffed, but he slept easy, chin resting on the back of Arthur's neck. The both of them did, under the endless depths of the sky like it was two decades before, fathers and their son against the world. The only thing missing was Dutch.

_We did not kill any bears, more's the pity, but Hosea is looking better for eating the deer I killed for him, and Dutch is real glad we didn't run into trouble on account of O'Driscolls or hunters or angry goose or somesuch. I am sure the rabbits are relieved we have moved on, too; the old man might not be so strong as to take down real prey no more, but that don't mean he can't give hell to them he can get his jaws on._

_I love Hosea something fierce,_ Arthur wrote beside a sketch of Hosea, lit from beneath by the campfire's light. _I have always had doubts that I am capable of loving something so fierce - a feller don't live long in this line of work by being soft, and my place in the gang means I must be meaner than most - but where Dutch put in me the virtue of loyalty and work it was Hosea who taught me to be kind, and I have no doubts that I would not like the feller I would have turned out to be without either of them. Dutch might been the one who got my trust, but it is Hosea who is my father, and I have always wished that it was his blood in my veins, and not my daddy's who died too late to do me or himself any good. __I have not told anyone, but I think Hosea knows. Sometimes I like to think he has the same wish._

"Thanks," Arthur said later, gruff as he rubbed the back of his neck. Three dreamless nights by the lake had done the both of them well; his sleep in camp had gentled enough he didn't need to take up a patrol, so miss Grimshaw didn't look sad at him over her morning cup of coffee anymore after she'd caught him prowling about checking in on Jack and Sean and Lenny. The food sack he was hauling to Pearson pressed relentlessly down on his shoulder.

Hosea's answering smile was soft, and he leaned over the newspapers Lenny bought him to pat Arthur's arm. "Don't mention it," He said. "Dutch's snoring was getting on my nerves too."

-:-

More secretly, though, Arthur dreamed of Charles, and there was nothing to be done about those. Of his broad hands on Arthur’s face, resting gently on his back, curled around his arm bleeding heat into the bone, the scrape of the side of his thumb against Arthur’s skin when he brushed it back and forth. Of his size and weight, the breadth of his shoulders and the deepness of his chest and the softness of his gut. Of the shape of his mouth, his arms, of Charles in _Arthur’s_ arms. Of his kindness, sitting across a fire listening to Arthur air out his dusty fool’s head.

 _I have wanted to be around very few people in my life,_ Arthur wrote by the light of the scout fire one night, unable to sleep again. _And I have wanted to be with even fewer._ Restlessly, Arthur sketched out the slope of Charles’ shoulder, roughed out his bare back, the darkness of his skin; imagined detail, muscle dense and hard under the fat that softened his frame. Only Arthur would recognise who it was - he hadn’t ever seen Charles bare, it may as well have been a man from town for all anyone else would know. _If I kissed him I am afraid I would take some of his goodness and leave him less than he is but lord, do I want to. I have always been selfish in that way._

_More than that, I’m afraid of him kissing me. Friendship don’t survive what comes after, and I am not a feller with the sense to not take what isn’t his. I have always been a thief, too. _

There were other sins in Arthur’s head and heart, all tangled up together with the heat in his gut, the cold certainty in his heart, but he tore out the page from his journal before he gathered the courage to write them, and tossed it into the fire.

-:-

In the shadow of his tent Arthur packed his things, guns locked safely in the locker and spare clothes shoved into a bag bigger than his satchel, ear turned to Sean and Charles and Lenny at the table. Sean waved his hands through the air, eyes bright with his tall tale of the coach robbery that got taller each time he told it, and Lenny’s brighter with his disbelief.

Charles caught Arthur’s eyes now and then, lovely in the sunshine; he nodded at a spare seat by his side each time, but Arthur turned his head away and pretended not to see.

Across camp, at the main fire, John’s shoulders mantled around his ears like the raising of hackles, back studiously turned. Blood stained the bandages of the arm John nursed, and when Arthur chuckled, rough and humourless, he made sure it carried. Arthur had turned miserable with the changing of the months, May into June and June into July ( _more_ miserable, at least - Arthur was a mean and sad bastard on his best days, and those best days he could count on one hand); he hadn’t quite meant to leave even more scars from a wolf on John than the Grizzlies’ had, but he had made Jack cry.

At the very least the summer had left Arthur a mean enough beast that _Hosea_ had grabbed the back of his shirt and shook him, and sent him off to do chores like being tired would take the edge off his anger. More fool Hosea, Arthur thought, though the thought stuck uncomfortably in his head. It just made him tired _and_ angry, and no good company for Charles, idly whittling and snorting a laugh as Lenny swatted Sean. “Didn’t happen!” Said Lenny, sitting back in his seat. “Ain’t no way!”

“Mercy!” Said Sean, arms around his head. “I might have pups somewhere!”

Lenny scoffed, shaking his head. “Like you get it up for anythin’ other’n Karen,” He said, all crooked grin and scratchy stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave, the shine of sunlight bright against his dark skin. Sean’s eyes half-closed around his laugh, needling right back, young and wild and reminding Arthur a little too much of John before Jack had been in his future.

Gritting his teeth, Arthur shoved his journal to the bottom of his clothes chest, under jeans and jackets and a lost lover’s letters he couldn’t quite bear to burn. Deeper than the letters, even; under the pictures he didn’t let his fingertips linger on, the photograph of his mother with Arthur a pup in her arms, eyes and ears shut against the world, and of Dutch and Hosea and Annabelle and Miss Bessie all shoved into a studio too small for all of them, and of a woman with dark skin and golden hair and her own young pup in her arms, the tiny little folds of his ears opened enough for him to hear.

He scratched his bare chest, thick hairs rasping beneath his nails. The dirt floor of his tent packed hard pressed against his feet, dull beneath the tough soles; a prickle of sweat itched beneath his leather suspenders, and Arthur scratched that, too, as Sean rattled a growl around his mouth, high with play, and shoved Lenny who shoved back.

“Enough, both of you,” Said Dutch, smoking at the entrance of his tent, but it was too thick with a chuckle to make Sean more contrite than flashing the pale side of his throat towards him. “Arthur? All set there, son?”

“Nearly,” Arthur grunted, more shortly than he meant to, and jammed another wad of shirts and trousers into his bag.

Kelpie burred at him from the pasture, gleaming a lovely silver as she grazed side-by-side with Taima and Ennis. Bare of tack she knew well enough she wasn’t coming with on this trip out, and she dropped her head back down to crop at the grass. Arthur hoped she didn’t mind. Any other time of year he would have liked the company, wordless and steadfast, but not in summer. Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

Certainly not after Micah, oozing across camp like the spread of blood. “Awful strange, cowpoke,” Said Micah, and the pole of Arthur’s tent creaked beneath his weight. “You, runnin’ off for weeks on end, out there in the big ol’ world all alone? Thought you was the one who ain’t a lone wolf?” A whine whistled faintly in Micah’s throat, reedy and thin against the back of his mouth, when he said, false-sweet, “Ain’t you gonna take a brother with you? Awful dangerous out there, even for the great Arthur Morgan.”

“Sure,” Arthur said, grunting as he struggled to fit a union suit into his bag. Weren’t often he wore one, because he never knew when he’d need to change shape, but West Elizabeth got cold for those without fur. “But I don’t reckon Dutch would be too pleased when I came home without him, on account of me killing him where he cain’t see.”

Micah’s boots scuffed through the dirt, a little thread of anger trailing on the air, and Arthur grinned to himself. “Careful there, brother,” Said Micah, low. “Fella might think you don’t like him.”

“I mighta thought,” Said Arthur, turning his head to hold Micah’s gaze, “That I have made myself real clear in how much I want to kill you. But then you ain’t playin’ cards with a full deck, are you?” He shouldered his bag and stood, arching his spine until his back clicked, tension a delicious burn. “We ain’t brothers, Micah,” Arthur rolled his head across his shoulders, neck cracking loose, and he showed teeth when he said, voice that guttural scrape from low in his throat, his chest, “And we sure as shit ain’t friends.”

Micah bristled, stiff-legged, claws curling against the air, curved and cruel. “Morgan,” He rasped, smile tight, “I just find it real interestin’ you’re runnin’ off on us when Dutch’s plannin’ on getting the O’Driscoll rat to give up their hole. You turnin’ yella’ on him?”

“Yellow?” Arthur demanded, and snorted. “I ain’t afraid of spillin’ blood, Micah, I just ain’t got the taste for senseless killing you do. Sean and I killed more O’Driscoll’s on that coach job ‘n you did anyhow, and you don’t hear us givin’ you shit for it.” He rolled his shoulder in a shrug, nodded to Dutch. “An’ he knows I leave this time of year, have for years, so don’t go swaggerin’ around thinkin’ you got somethin’ over me you don’t actually got. So best you git gone,” Arthur said, the low guttural scrape of threat from his chest, and the curl of his mouth was cruel when he added, “Else a feller loses his patience and mauls you worse’n he did his _real_ brother.”

Karen, with the girls at their wagon, whistled as Arthur shoved past Micah, Mary-Beth flushed a bright red as she ducked behind her book. Dutch smoked, a trail of bluish smoke drifting up from the lit end of his cigar, sweet on the breeze, as he surveyed camp. The O’Driscoll tied to the tree wailed as Mrs Adler pressed a knife to his throat, face twisted into a snarl as fierce and savage as any she-cat’s, until Miss Grimshaw busied her away back to the chores.

“I understand perfectly well Missus Adler,” She said, hands planted square on her hips, to whatever wounded scrape Mrs Adler snarled at her, “That you’re angry about your husband. I do. But there will be no killing the O’Driscoll until Dutch says so, and I ain’t heard so much as a peep from him that he’s ready to be done with the wretch.”

“I’m headin’ out!” Arthur called, swinging by the pasture to give Kelpie a farewell pat, “If I ain’t back in a month you know where to check.” Taima, tail flicking contentedly, nosed Arthur’s palm, his pocket, and Arthur patted her in apology. “Sorry there girl,” He murmured softly, stroking her dark cheeks, and gently ran his knuckles down Kelpie’s broad neck when she nosed at him too. “Ain’t got no sweets for neither of you. Reckon Charles won’t be too pleased I woo you away from him on account of me bein’ too soft on you, neither.”

Taima lipped gently at Arthur’s wrist, then lowered her head to graze. Arthur patted the dense meat of her shoulder and caught Kelpie instead, smoothing down the white stripe of her nose. “You be good, now,” He said, “Y’hear? Don’t wanna hear Dutch complainin’ you bucked him when he was only tryin’ to stretch your legs a bit.” Kelpie shook herself off, and settled back in beside Taima, ears wide and relaxed on her head.

Snorting to himself - damn thing was far too clever for her own good - Arthur pushed off from his heels and disappeared into the trees to change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been apologising a lot lately, it's probably getting tedious, but I really am sorry for how this fic's update schedule is falling apart the longer it goes on. I'm especially sorry for the hiatus, I really didn't mean for it to happen or go on for as long as it did.
> 
> Part of it is that I'm much busier at uni than I was expecting (I love the Vikings, I really do, but good god the research for my dissertation is dull), but mostly I just needed time to work out how I wanted to approach the last half of this fic. It's not that I don't know where it's going, it's that I'm not sure how best to get there. Plus, I needed to work out how to get around Kieran and Six Point Cabin because I am _not_ writing another action-heavy chapter until I absolutely have to, but it's still very much needed. Which ended up being Arthur in a completely different state while Sadie did that mission in his place, but whatever, I'm trying to keep this fic at least slightly moving. (It's getting the slow burn going too, which I feel has been really lacking the last few chapters.)
> 
> I can't promise there's going to be another update anytime soon, so I'm throwing out any sort of schedule to say; this fic updates when it updates, whether it's in two weeks or two months, and I'm very sorry I can't be more specific.
> 
> (Also for anyone who's curious, I've always headcanoned Eliza of being of African descent, I don't know why, so unlike Arthur who's descended from European grey wolves Eliza is an [African golden wolf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_golden_wolf).)


	20. Chapter 20

In fur and on four paws Arthur crossed the Dakota river and kept going West, not half so far to the true western wilds as he would have preferred but far enough, and away from the roads and towns and constant, circling railroads he let himself be smoothed back to calm so he didn’t want to bite just for a snide comment to a child that wasn’t even his.

Summer was still swelling in northern West Elizabeth, swaying pines sweet with sap, flowers pushing through dirt that had been frozen in winter and muddy sludge in spring. Prey had gone up into the mountains with the melting of the snow, though the Grizzlies’ peaks still looked locked in winter’s death-grip to Arthur, but there was game enough in Big Valley that he didn’t feel like braving the cold all over again.

The gang had paid the price for poor Heidi McCourt up in that snow, losing Jenny and Davey, Mac gone God knew where. Arthur had paid the price for his own sin a decade gone, scars on his flank shrunken tight with Big Valley’s lingering chill; sullen and miserable and outright mean at the height of summer he might have been, but Arthur had at least learned over the years that he didn’t need to pay the same price each year.

It was easier, after all, to keep his head down and put his pain into work, hunting and killing and protecting his family as needed. Dutch had put traces on him the first time he hadn’t needed to convince Arthur to stay in his camp, tamed that wild and feral thing who could barely change his shape - Arthur had learned to enjoy his work, until summer got him too mean to be able to do it right for a while. And like the sled dogs in Canada, running the trails to keep the wheels of the whole country turning through winter, who had learned to enjoy _their_ work, Arthur would rather die in the traces than be cut loose.

When he wasn’t fighting with John over the damn fool being mean to his boy, at least. But it was easy to let himself be soothed, living in the wilds like he was a child again, savage and solitary and snapping at the friendly hand stretched out to him.

West of lake Owanjila, in the pocket of forest between the mountains’ reaching roots, Arthur wormed his way into a den dug beneath an outcrop of West Elizabeth’s dark grey stone; the tufts of fur lining its bottom had no smell left, and the dirt and walls had been scoured clean of scent too, so Arthur left his bag of clothes there for his night roving, and slept there during the day. Easier than pitching a tent, warmer, _safer_. He killed for food when he was hungry, drank from the shallow stream that fed the lake when he was thirsty, turned his eyes to the depths of the sky and the sweeping band of stars when he wanted to remember that the world was too big to care for a single cursed beast.

Easy, simple wants for a simple beast, and wants easily met.

Arthur watched the waning of the moon, the turning of the sky. Stretched out at the mouth of the den, fattened on meat he had killed by his own strength and skill, even the local werewolf - that grizzled old hag living in the pass upstream of Little Creek River - wary enough to heed the warning in the wounds Arthur had left on her, Arthur felt small enough that there was space to think.

There wasn’t so much of it in camp, when they all lived on top of one another, space and food and clothes shared the price for the protection being part of a whole gave them. He wouldn’t trade any of it for anything, of course, except for maybe Dutch’s dream of their home made real, but…

Arthur sighed as he watched the moon crawl across the sky. It curled as mist and fog from his mouth and nose, melting into the dark.

Eliza had been quiet, not on account of not knowing what to say or being unwilling to talk to Arthur, but because she understood. Even meeting her in a saloon, yellow wolf’s eyes catching on blue, a snatch of scent and sound, the pull in his gut at some clever joke she told, Eliza had been quiet with him. Folded her hand over his arm, stubby fingers and small slender frame and lean, dense muscle; warm against Arthur’s side as she tipped her head close to breathe in the smell of him, and letting him breathe in her’s. Her face had been narrow, harsh - her eyes a yellow so sharp they could have cut. But her smile, plush lips covering teeth, had been soft.

She barely said a word to him, until after Arthur had followed the trail she painted across the summer-brown grass - wolves reaching out to sniff noses in the forest clearing where she glowed under the moon, gold fur and gold eyes and dark skin beneath - and after showing off his strength for her as they hunted deer, though Eliza had taken the kill.

Arthur wished he remembered what she said, loose with sex and a lot of food in his arms, tucked together on the rug in her home, but he’d been too distracted by the warmth of her hand on his face, fingers curling behind his ear. It shouldn’t have mattered, really - it was only one night, when Arthur was still missing Mary and Eliza was out of place in a human town and proud of it, but lonely with it too.

The night had stretched into five years because of their little Isaac, who was wolf-pup black when he was born, skin as dark as his mother’s beneath the fur that lightened to Arthur’s brown when he grew from baby to child and learned to change his shape. Arthur hoped Isaac knew his father loved him, even if Eliza had never wanted to test the pull of his love for Dutch and Hosea to keep him with her. But he had gone back as often as he could, a week every month with a fistful of what cash he had, and sometimes with grandpa Hosea to teach him how to read the letters Arthur sent. 

Arthur wondered, watching the rise and fall of the moon, the spinning of the heavens, if Isaac had called out for him that day his life and his mother’s life were traded for ten dollars. If Isaac had wondered where his father was, or if it was something he would have never thought to wonder. If Isaac’s memories had been good ones, before he’d gone. Would _Eliza_ have shouted for him, to call or to curse or just vain, desperate hope? She’d have lived to curse Arthur if he was there for sure. Left a few days early, had never left the last time he visited, had insisted she come with him back to Dutch.

He shook away the thoughts as the sky lightened with dawn, sunlight filling the empty spaces between stars, and retreated back to the den; he supposed he shouldn’t think of Isaac, who he had loved, and Eliza, who he had loved as a friend, but he didn’t know what else to think of when July rolled around and the ugliness he carried on his soul bloomed with the summer.

Maybe, Arthur thought, watching the grey dawn light spill through the mouth of the den, he shouldn’t think of anything at all. He had always been dumb.

-:-

He climbed to the peak of mount Shann, right to its top where the cold air cut open the inside of his nose and throat as he breathed and he could forget the world below for a moment, towards the end of July. He could be swallowed up by the sky, if he let himself - go mad like a preacher in the rivers he’d found, demanding answers from the clouds, like he’d threatened to a decade gone, picking fights with anything that moved in the hope it would finish him off, like he still could if the gang weren’t there to be protected and served.

Rising up onto his two hind feet, nose turned up at the thin sliver of the moon, Arthur howled, a long and wailing note pushed out from deep in his guts, and watched it rise from his mouth to disappear between the stars like a prayer.

It wasn’t one a church would want from him, and it wasn’t for the living and it wasn’t for the dead. There wasn’t a question in its rise, or a lonely want in its trailing off, or a call to anything in particular in between. There was nothing to it that would make a wolf take up the song, natural or not. It wasn’t _for_ anything at all, except maybe to make a sound.

-:-

O’Driscolls, whose fires glowed through the trees, drove Arthur into Strawberry for a few days, human for the first time in weeks. Probably for the best, Arthur thought as he crouched in the trees outside town to change; it were about time he got home, before he started to worry folk.

Gunshots had echoed off the slopes of Mount Shann, shouts rising high with the joy of a kill, the triumph of flushing prey from its hole, the frustration of losing the trail; a werewolf had howled a friendly warning to them all, the voice too clear to be the old wolf’s wheeze and too complex to be a natural wolf’s, before it had trailed away into silence.

The mayor didn’t seem to mind a werewolf strolling in, looking Arthur up and down behind his spectacles - bloodstains on his mouth and mud flaking away from the hair of his arms - before he offered his hand. “Welcome!” He said, too cheerful, too charming, but genuine enough when Arthur caught the edge of his scent on the wind. “I do hope you’ll enjoy your stay, even after the… _mess_ one of your kind left behind a few weeks ago.”

Strawberry still showed scars from Micah’s rampage, bullet holes in walls and widows in black, staring out at the street without seeing, men limping or lame and bandaged up. Idle eyes burned against Arthur’s back, his whiteless eyes, the wolf’s teeth in his mouth, and he forced himself not to bristle under the weight of their regard, shaking the mayor’s hand as brusquely as he could afford to.

“I’m real sorry to hear that,” Arthur rasped, smile fixed. His voice had been scratched hoarse with a month of disuse. “Seems a place too nice for summat like tha’ - you done a fine job.” The mayor puffed out his chest, and Arthur grimaced an apology as he nodded to the Welcome Centre before the man had even opened his mouth to speak, said, “Listen, I ain’t opposed to speakin’ with you more but I just spent a real long while out in the wild, you know if they got any rooms free I can borrow?”

The mayor blinked, and leaned back on his heels. “Oh!” He said, clapping his hands together, holding them loose over his belly. “Of course, forgive me, I had noticed but hadn’t wanted to say anything - you understand, I’m sure,” He added, tipping his head to Arthur, who smiled thinly. “Well, don’t let me keep you - Go! Enjoy your stay, good man.”

“Much appreciated.”

The clerk didn’t recognise him when Arthur paid for a room and bath, on account of how many people might have passed through Strawberry, but his smile was friendly enough when he handed over the key and waved over a girl sweeping the floor to start heating water, even with the shine of Arthur’s eyes in the lamplight. The bear roaring in the corner, the long toes of its forepaws reaching out its claws against the air, watched Arthur retreat upstairs, into the wet heat of the bath.

Later, sat on the floor because the smell of too many people on the bed made Arthur’s head hurt, he listened to the street below. Strawberry was lively enough, horses snorting as mud slipped under their hooves, harness and traces jangling, the murmurs of idle talk and shouted orders too muffled behind the wooden walls for the words to be clear. It was the sort of place Eliza and Isaac would have liked, small and rural and bright with trees and wild spaces, work in the Welcome Centre and plenty of burrows and hidden spaces for a little boy to lose himself exploring.

Arthur swallowed the old hurt lodged in his throat, forcing it around the too-sweet metal taste of spoiled blood, back to its space behind his heart. He listened instead, to the horses and the workmen, the mayor talking to the clerk below, and to the group of men settling in on the chairs by the fireplace below; to the thunderous canter of new horses through the muddy streets, and the whoops and cheers that followed them to the butcher down the road as they exclaimed over the pelts of werewolves thrown over the back of their horses.

The doors swung open, _thudding_ against the wall - murmurs greeted it, a welcome and a thinly-hidden condemnation for the robbery of some business emperor's train. Colm's voice rang out, clear from the entrance of the Welcome Center below; Arthur's claws gouged deep into the wooden floor between them.

"My boys and I, friends," Said Colm, cool and sly as the drip of oil, pain a faint catch at the back of his throat, "Are proud werewolf hunters. Robbin' Cornwall's train was just a... _side business_ in difficult times, and I'm sure the Detective Agency understands all about that."

"I don't think I like your tone, sir," Said another man, beneath the squeal of a chair leg scuffing the wooden floor and a grunt of effort.

"Ain't nothin' to my tone," Colm said, as placid and even as the surface of a lake. "Just an observation, s'all. I'm sure breakin' labour strikes were as of great national importance as the defendin' of a president. But I ain't one to judge, we all gotta do what we need for our pay, at the end of the day. I'm sure if we can come to some... _agreement_ over my boys robbing trains to get our pay, I can give you what you need for yours."

The man was silent for a long while. Outside, an O'Driscoll's voice rose proud over the din, thick with pride. "And what is it you can give us?" The man asked. "I always doubt the merits of a criminal who turns in another."

"An' usually you'd be right," Said Colm, soft and firm enough Arthur had to press his ears to the floor to listen. "But the feller you're hunting, who robbed that ferry in Blackwater, ain't no usual man to me, and these circumstances we find ourselves in ain't so _usual_ either. So don't you go doubtin' my _merits_ , friends, else you'll find what I can give you worth more'n what you can give me." Colm was quiet a moment, except for the hollow _tap_ of his boots against the floor. He sighed at something, wheezing faintly. "Dutch Van Der Linde wronged me," He said, harsh, "And I will see his debt paid one way or another."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had this chapter written for a while now, but it needed changing so I gutted most of it and rewrote the rest - there was going to be Charles at some point, and Arthur was going to find Colm in Valentine, but I found it just too cluttered like that so I stripped it back to mostly Arthur being sad and poetic, and Colm being scheming. Still not all that pleased with it, but there's a few bits I really enjoyed writing.
> 
> I can't promise another chapter any time soon, because Christmas and because I'm working on a few later chapters that need to be set in stone before I do anything else, but I've got a decent idea of how to move forward so it shouldn't be too long.


	21. Chapter 21

Arthur rushed into camp on his Walker, tapping his heels to the bay’s flanks to drive him faster and faster across the dirt roads and the silvery river, hooves pounding the ground in time with the beating of Arthur’s heart in his throat, leaping over grass and ground and turns in the road he couldn’t afford to follow close. All through the water and the trees until he hauled on the Walker's reins to slow him and jumped off his back at the hitching posts before he’d stopped, stumbling and catching himself on the Walker’s broad neck.

Kelpie whinnied delight at him, and big Brown Jack took up the cry, but Arthur pushed his way past John on guard and Miss Grimshaw who came up to greet him, brows drawn tight together.

Worry soured the air, thick and cloying in the back of Arthur’s mouth, even with everybody at their post; Pearson made dinner and the girls mended clothes and Abigail minded Jack, the flaps of Dutch’s tent closed against the stiff breeze and the eyes of camp. Except when Arthur glanced at them, Javier was sharpening knives and Mrs Adler held a repeater tight in her hands as she glared at the world, and reverend and Uncle were sober by the main fire, and even Bill, a grizzly shuffling through the confines of camp, dug his claws into the ground and raised his nose to scent the air, rounded ears folded back against the sunlight that shone on his bald, leathery face. Charles, at the table at the front of camp, raised his hand in greeting, and didn't take his eyes away from the dark between the trees.

“Dutch!” Arthur called, and pushed his way through the stink of anxiety towards the tent flaps Hosea held open for him. Arthur’s heart sank into his gut as he swallowed, an ache of fear in the space it left behind, at the look Hosea gave him.

His face was drawn; harsh even in the warm light glowing through the tent’s canvas walls, shadows dark and stark within the wrinkles and the hollows of his eyes and cheeks. He sniffed, subtle, and Arthur sniffed back, less subtle, but neither of them smelled like blood or hurt or even anger. It didn’t settle him none, not with the press of a rifle’s muzzle against the back of their heads, Hosea and Sean and Bill and Arthur, and Micah.

Dutch looked worse, and Arthur’s gut tightened around the lump of his heart. Slumped down on his bed, elbows resting on his knees as he stared at his revolver, hanging loose from his hand; he looked as old as Arthur had ever seen him, shrunken in a way Dutch van der Linde was not meant to be shrunken, lines and wrinkles carved even deeper than they had been up in the mountains and snow and the threat of long, lingering death.

Hosea sat on the bed beside him, held his hand on Dutch’s knee. “Dutch,” Arthur said into the quiet, low and urgent. “Colm’s planning on movin’ on us. We gotta go, and we gotta go _now_.”

“I know, son,” Said Dutch, and Arthur snarled at the weariness, the whisper-softness of his voice.

“The hell we waitin’ for then?” Arthur demanded, and held Dutch’s glare, the weight of disapproval in his dark eyes, with a rumble in his throat. He gritted his teeth as he flung his hand out westwards, towards Strawberry and Colm and O’Driscolls and whatever their goddamn plans were, because Arthur was a no-good foul-tempered beast but he’d be _damned_ before he let Colm get his way, and damn _Dutch_ for whatever lethargy had taken root in his bones! “We got wagons, we got horses, and we ain’t being chased into a snowstorm on the mountains - the longer we wait the longer Colm’s gonna get what wits he got and come after us. Let’s _move_.”

Camp was quiet outside the walls, except for the rustle of the wind through the trees and the murmur of the horses as they greeted the stranger, the rhythmic ringing scrape of the whetstone against steel and the _thuds_ of Pearson’s cleaver through meat. Arthur’s growl rumbled like thunder through the boards of the pallet floor, claws dragging over his jeans, fur and hackles bristling beneath his union suit.

Dutch’s jaw tightened, lips pulling back to show blunt human teeth, unblinking, unyielding, and Arthur turned his head a little to show the side of his jaw; pacifying, without backing down, because Arthur was a beast made to follow and he didn’t want to challenge, but he didn’t want to give ground, either. Not here. Not over this; not with the people Arthur was built to protect, because lord knew they got on his nerves most of the time but they were _family_ , and that was all that had ever mattered.

Where the cats and the bears that were not Bill stood on their own for the most part, a werewolf had always been bred to stand with family. There was nothing for a lone wolf after all, except scavenging and wandering and surviving, where a pack wolf could sleep safe and loved. And Arthur had been raised to serve - _Dutch_ had raised him to serve; to be loyal to family above all, to kill and protect what was his to be loyal to, and Arthur was dutiful and obedient and he _would_ follow that creed, come hell or high water.

“If I might interrupt, dear boy?” Said Trelawny.

Arthur dropped into a crouch with a snarl, claws curling, muzzle pushing out his face, ears folding back flat to his skull and the hackles bristling along his neck, before he recognised Trelawny’s face. Or the one he usually wore around them at any rate, a gentleman just stepped out from a dime novel’s pages, moustache curling upwards at their end and a suit neat and crisp, shoes shining even after the dirt he must’ve had to walk through.

Trelawny smiled, pleased; no trace of fear on his scent, or any sort of scent at all. “Goodness!” He clapped his hands together, as proud as if Arthur were his own son and not Dutch and Hosea’s, as Arthur smoothed out his face and fur and forced his claws back into nails. “I forget how fearsome you can be, dear Arthur. Terribly frightening. You simply _must_ teach me how to look like a werewolf one day, I imagine it must be quite useful on occasion to look so fearsome!”

“You was saying, Trelawny?” Said Dutch, tiredly. “I’d like to hear their plan _before_ Colm storms my camp, if you’d be so kind.”

“Well!” Said Trelawny, bright as summer sunshine. “I’m afraid there isn’t so much to tell - I couldn’t pose as someone of rank, you understand, or I’d’ve been found out quicker than a wolf in a pig pen. _But_ ,” He said, as Dutch huffed and put his palms on his knees to heave himself up, “I did find out this - Colm knows where you are, Dutch. And he knows you hit Six Point Cabin with that pet O’Driscoll I see you’ve taken in, and he knows that if he doesn’t strike now he’ll lose you for another few years.” Trelawny drummed his fingertips against his leg, and his mouth thinned into a pale, grim line. “He’s opened negotiations with the Pinkertons.” Trelawny said, and Hosea grimaced.

“And what did you find from the Pinkertons?” Murmured Hosea. His thumb stroked across the broad back of Dutch’s hand, along the tendons pressing against skin, the dark hairs rasping faintly; his voice was rueful when he said, “I don’t suppose they know better than to leave well enough alone.”

“Even after the spanking you gave them on your way out,” Trelawny agreed. He laced his hands together, rested his ankle on his knee and leaned back in his seat as he eyed them all, Dutch and Hosea and Arthur, dark eyes glittering. “I’m afraid not. But luckily for you they’re in rather a difficult position - a certain business emperor Leviticus Cornwall is rather adamant he gets Colm’s head for some robbery or somesuch, I couldn’t quite get any details. He’s been funding the Pinkertons with the agreement that they capture Colm, and what with all the bureaucracy and legal contracts they can’t use his money to go after _you_ , however much they would like to bring you to justice for the ferry robbery.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Dutch smoothed down his moustache as he turned his hand in Hosea’s hold and gripped back. A few of the shadows dark in his eyes lightened a little as he squeezed Hosea’s fingers, rolling words and thoughts and dreams around his mouth and mind. “And making an agreement with Colm voids the contracts with Cornwall.”

“If they tell him,” Said Trelawny. “Or if it was a legally recognised alliance, at any rate, but legalities don’t matter if Cornwall finds out because more _personally_ they will have betrayed him, and he can cancel the contracts.” Arthur blinked, and caught Hosea’s gaze, but Hosea only smiled and shook his head, a motion of his other hand _don’t worry_ , so Arthur settled back on his heels. “So they will do their utmost to limit their involvement with Colm.”

“Which means what for us?” Said Hosea, not quite hard enough to be a demand but hardly a question, either. His head stayed trained on Trelawny, but the reddish shine of his eyes through the dark of Dutch’s tent was on Arthur. “They can’t afford to let us go, and they can’t afford to let Colm go. But to capture us means allying with Colm, which would anger Cornwall if it got back to him because he hired them to capture Colm.”

“And Colm’s mouth would shut tighter’n a beartrap if they caught him for questioning.”

Sitting back in his seat with a smile, eyes half-lidded with satisfaction, Trelawny said, “Precisely!” Mouth widening into a grin, he leaned forward as he gestured. “The Pinkertons are quite pleased to finally have a way to strike at you, let me tell you - Blackwater was so full of posters for you I could scarcely _breathe_ \- but to do so means a very tenuous agreement with Colm, which if they’re smart they will break as soon as they have a certain mister Van Der Linde in custody; two birds, one stone as they say. But that gives us a rather unique opportunity to shake off two rather troublesome and dogged pursuers - no offense, dear boys - by making Colm’s information useless to them.”

Just outside the canvas walls the noise of camp picked up again. Soothed by something, though maybe that something was so simple as Arthur not barging through camp. Abigail crooned gently to Jack, keeping him close so he didn’t hurtle into the grown ups’ conversation to see his uncle Arthur, and Bill grunted and groaned as he shuffled over to Pearson’s wagon, and Pearson shouted at him to go and that food would be ready when it was ready, and any more pestering he’d turn _Bill_ into the next stew. At the hitching posts Mrs Adler rasped something at John, a new kind of steel beneath the wounded scrape of her voice, and John let her take the post; by the horses the captured O’Driscoll whimpered, a high, plaintive cry to whatever Mrs Adler snarled at him.

Miss Grimshaw set to bustling between the tents, shouting at the girls to keep up their work and murmuring warmly to Jack, rare praise for Reverend Swanson so rarely sober, and a snap at Uncle for not chopping the firewood like she’d told him to do earlier. Sean and Karen started their usual evening ritual a little early behind the trees sheltering camp, his brogue gone throaty beneath her cries.

Charles was quiet. Charles was always quiet, but he was there when Arthur listened for him, at the table in front of Dutch’s tent; breathing even and steady, the thread of his scent slipping through the mingled smell of Dutch and Hosea. Arthur licked his lips, said, “There’s a patch of forest West of Owanjila lake, just south of the stream what feeds it. It’s up against the mountains, so we’d be penned in somewhat, but I been living there this last month and ain’t seen anything worse’n a black bear, and Bill can take care’a her. The O’Driscolls in Black Bone Forest ain’t never known I was there, neither, and if need be there’s a pass through the mountains West of Big Valley, past the big ranch by Little Creek river, that’ll get us safe outta the way.”

Hosea nodded, smile curling slow and eager and bright as he jostled Dutch to get him to look. “We’ll rob the bank,” He said, low, and beneath his hand Dutch stirred, came into himself a little more. “In Valentine - it’s a small town but it’s a livestock town, good money in animals. We rob it and while everyone’s distracted we slip away to West Elizabeth, keep north of the Montana river, and soon enough we’ll be back West where we belong! Won’t be all the money we lost in Blackwater but if we’re real lucky we’ll get a fresh start of it.”

“Bill’s good at controlling crowds,” Said Dutch, head tipped close to Hosea’s, foreheads pressed together as he murmured into the space between them. Arthur tipped his head to the tent flaps, and Trelawny nodded and followed him out. “Karen’s always a distraction.”

“And Lenny’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Said Hosea. “Small operation like that? They’ll be in and out in ten minutes, and we’ll be gone before they know what’s hit them!”

Arthur slumped down on the main fire’s log; sighed, at the warmth washing through his bones, the satisfaction of being back where he belonged, the tiredness of having a hunter’s gun trained on his head. But when Lenny on the box next to him smiled welcome, watery and uncertain, Arthur found one for him in return, and leaned his elbows on his knees.

“Hullo Lenny,” He said, and wondered if the kid could hear the strain of keeping it it’s usual gruff grunt, as if everything was alright with the world again. Maybe he did - maybe he mistook the strain in it for speaking at all; Arthur knew the ugly scrape of his voice well enough, a beast’s throat behind a human mouth not meant for speaking human words, and it had only gotten worse over the month he hadn’t used it.

But Lenny was young still, a man by most accounts and older than Arthur’d been when he got into the life but young, and his smile smoothed out into something firmer, more real on his face, shoulders loosening beneath his shirt as he waved at Jack running up as fast as his little legs would carry him. “Uncle Arthur!” Jack cried, before anything Lenny might’ve said, and Arthur bent low to scoop Jack up and settle him against his chest.

“Well now,” Arthur rumbled, and Jack giggled at the thrum beneath his palm on Arthur’s chest, grin bright and wide as he beamed at all the world. “Who’s this li’l feller, hmm?”

Jack shrieked a laughing indignation, a pup’s affronted little howl gone high with playing along with the joke, and beneath Jack’s little hand Arthur’s heart seized, caught in Jack’s little fist. “It’s _me_ uncle Arthur!” He said, pointing to his chest.

“ _Naw_ ,” Arthur told him, looking Jack up and down. “You’re too big to be Jack! Dutch musta brought in a new boy to help wi’ work without tellin’ me, huh Lenny?” He met Lenny’s gaze as the kid threw his head back in a laugh, Jack swaying hard enough with his own giggles Arthur had to offer the boy his other hand to help steady him. “I thought for sure li’l Jackie weren’t so big last time I saw him."

“Sure,” Lenny agreed, eyes bright in his face. “Mister Pearson’s stew ain’t half bad these days, with all the meat Charles brings in.”

Jack’s small fist tightened around what it could grab of Arthur’s hand, and he hugged back readily enough when Arthur seated him on his leg and tucked him in close, chin resting on Jack’s head and arm wrapped loose around his back, while Jack settled back into his place with his dearest uncle. He didn’t smell quite right to have a pup’s scent - young, but the doggish beast-scent on his skin too borrowed from Arthur and Hosea to be mistaken for anything except a claim of family - but Arthur breathed it in all the same, and let it settle him the way a month in the wild never could.

Across camp John watched, a twist to his mouth, maybe regret or maybe relief that _someone_ was taking care of his son for him, and Arthur curled a lip at him, showed a flash of a fang. Arthur wasn’t ever going to be Jack’s father John knew that well enough, whatever delusions he’d spat the night he left for a year - Arthur had barely slept with Abigail even when she was in his tent, wore his scent on her skin to warn away some of the rowdier boys who’d’ve pushed before she was ready, and even those rare times he did Arthur was a wolf, as separate from humans as a cat to a dog, and nothing was ever going to take root in her.

Not from Arthur, or Sean or Mac or Davey who she had gone to after she’d found herself disappointed that Dutch’s great beast, his faithful enforcer, didn’t have the passion left to want more from her than someone to hold.

“You done anything fun while I was away?” Arthur asked Lenny, turning his head from John, and loosened his grip on Jack enough for the boy to twist around, eyes bright with the promise of a story. The rough calluses on his palm caught on the wool of Jack’s jacket, scraped over the soft skin of his hands - there wasn’t enough soap in the world to scrub away the animal smell that rose from Arthur’s skin and hair the way it never had from Hosea’s, obvious even to a human nose.

But Jack settled, and stared rapt as Lenny spun his bloodless tale - no natural storyteller like Hosea, but a skill of his all the same - of robbing a train with John and Sean and Charles. Of stealing an oil wagon and laying it over train tracks, and going through the carriages and luggage car of wealthy folks and their things looking for money that would keep them fed and safe and a step closer to Dutch’s dream of a home of their own. He gripped Arthur’s thumb tight with the breathless excitement of stealing the oil wagon, and turned his head into Arthur’s chest with fear for Sean when he was knocked out by a guard, and he kicked his heels against Arthur’s thigh with the joy of a job well done.

Arthur held him close as Lenny told the story, murmuring and gasping and grunting a laugh obligingly, and watched Micah slink around camp, jagged yellow teeth bared in his half-open jaws as he stalked, long claws digging into the earth; his pale eyes, shining through the dark below the trees, trained on Dutch’s tent all the while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, this one's longer than I thought it was. And I've made Arthur so soft and sad, lately - I hope it's not boring. There'll be some violence soon enough to balance it out, though, which I'm quite looking forward to because at least _one_ plot will be moving forward at last.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning **gross murder from Arthur and a lot less awful murder from Charles here** so usual deal for anyone who doesn't want that - stop at the second page break and pick up again from "Charles… made a noise".

“I don’t imagine I’ll like whatever this is,” Said Sheriff Malloy as Arthur shouldered open the door and eased himself inside, the woman on his shoulder hissing and spitting and kicking at him as best she could all tied up. Arthur grunted as he kicked the door closed, the deputy striding in through the back door nearly stumbling backwards through it, though whether his shock was on account of the woman’s wailing or the blood on Arthur’s shoulder and drenching the woman’s dress Arthur wasn’t quite sure. “Is there any particular reason you got this poor woman all tied up and hollering in my office?”

“The lady gutted a feller in her room over the saloon,” Arthur said. “I reckon it was a disagreement over payment or somesuch, I didn’t really get the details ‘fore she was goin’ after me too. Figured it was a matter for the local law.”

Sheriff Malloy jerked his head at his deputy, who nodded and hurried off down the street, but Malloy’s eyes glittered as he gestured Arthur to set the working woman down in one of the cells. “Well,” He said, low and mighty pleased, “A prostitute killer in my town? And right under our noses too.” He turned his head to Arthur, an apologetic little twist to his lips. “You don’t mind waiting on my deputy to verify, I hope. Not that you’ve given me too many reasons to distrust your word, mind, but I like to be certain of the crimes before I pass my judgement.”

“Quite alright, sheriff,” Arthur said, leaning against the wall. He struck a match on the bottom of his boot, lit a cigarette he put between his lips and lit the sheriff’s, too, when Malloy leaned in with his own. It wasn’t too long before the deputy was back, Arthur’s cigarette only half burned down, as bloodless as the feller the woman asked Arthur to get rid of, and Arthur got decent pay out of it even without a bounty on the woman so he tipped his hat in thanks at the both of them, and left for camp.

The days had passed quick as Dutch and Hosea worked with Lenny and Bill and Karen on a plan to rob Valentine’s bank as quiet as possible. Arthur scouted West, to find the easiest route to their next camp, and when Dutch didn’t send him West he was sent to Valentine, to work out the best route back out and home without attracting too much attention. Easy enough work, loping up and down the country and sketching out a basic map on a spare page in his journal for Dutch to check later, and Arthur took the time to teach Kelpie to piaffe. A useless trick, but she let herself be taught it, so Arthur pressed kisses to her nose for her trouble. She was a damn fine horse.

Early morning mist curled between the tents and wagons when Arthur drifted in, in the grey space before dawn; chilled with the promise of the coming autumn, grass wet with dew beneath Arthur’s boots. From the pasture Taima whickered a welcome Kelpie returned as Arthur untacked her, but she lipped at the brim of Arthur’s worn old hat before she left him to graze, tail flicking against her silvery flanks contentedly.

There weren’t too much point going to sleep, so Arthur brushed down the horses, careful of The Count’s temper because he was liable to kick and Brown Jack’s enormous hooves on account of one misstep unerringly shattering every bone in a man’s foot, gentle with Kelpie and Taima and gritting his teeth with frustration at bouncy Ennis and the more stubborn of the draft horses. Even Baylock he brushed out, though his brushing was more cursory than the others as he was as foul tempered a beast as any horse Arthur had ever met and probably would have bitten off Arthur’s fingers if he weren’t so wary of a werewolf’s teeth, dancing away from Arthur’s baring of them. He checked hooves for stones and legs for cuts, spent a while rubbing ointment on a scrape on Maggie’s foreleg and Old Belle’s belly, and lingered long with Silver Dollar and Kelpie, patting their broad necks before he left the pasture.

The fires roared to life when Arthur fed them, bright through the lightening gloom, and he nudged a percolator to the edge of the cooking fire, breathed in the bitter smell of coffee as he chopped firewood through the dawn. He hauled food sacks as miss Grimshaw woke herself up with her morning cup, eyes closed against coffee they had always brewed dark and bitter enough to burn the mouth numb, and hay as the girls started in on their day’s chores, Mary-Beth and Karen giggling over terrible romance novels, and water as Pearson hollered that food was ready.

He shouldered the O’Driscoll as the kid eyed Kelpie, and bared teeth in a grin as he flinched away, shoulders up around his ears as he shrunk in on himself. “What’chu doin’, O’Driscoll?” Arthur asked, low, an edge to the friendliness shining like a blade. “Fixin’ to steal my horse and run back to the rat hole now you’re down from the tree, O'Driscoll?”

"I ain't an O'Driscoll!" The boy cried hotly, before he shrank and soured with fear beneath Arthur's shadow. “N-no sir, mister Morgan sir, jus’- jus’ doin’ my chores! Takin’ care of the horses! Thought- thought she m'might need brushin', s'all...”

Snorting, Arthur shoved him away. “Don’t you go near my Kelpie, boy,” He said. “She don't got no patience for fools and cowards, and I don't got too much either. Dutch might’a grown a soft spot for you on that hit on Colm’s base you took him to - Lord knows why, I don't care to ask - but I still reckon we should set Mrs Adler on you. You’d make good target practice for that new rifle she got, at least." The boy shrank away from Arthur's grin, the gleam of those animal teeth lining his jaws. Cowardice made the boy smart, at least, even if it also made his stink of fear and horse muck and horse. "That all you good for, O'Driscoll?” He said kindly. "'Cause I'd sooner cut you loose than have you messin' about with my dear lady Kelpie."

"Y-you can't cut me loose, mister! Colm'd kill me!"

"That ain't my problem, boy," Arthur said, and held out an apple for Kelpie when she nosed his satchel.

It would have been a fairly normal day, if miss Grimshaw hadn’t attacked camp so fiercely as to have everything packed and up on the wagons not too long after noon, temporary tents set up and fussed with for their last night at the overlook, and Sean hadn’t herded the chickens into their cages ready for moving, Pearson’s ladle striking his snout or clipping his hip if he snapped at them. Jack and Abigail's bedrolls barely fit inside Arthur's overnight tent, but at least he didn't have to put up with John and Bill like Javier had to, or Uncle and the Reverend who both stumbled drunkenly through camp like Strauss did.

Arthur sighed as he helped Javier gather up the horses through the afternoon, looping rope loose around their heads in makeshift halters and hitching them to the posts at the entrance of camp. His skin itched with eyes on his back, bones creaking with how tightly he held onto them to stop himself changing shape and patrolling the little copse of trees they were sheltered in, muscle in his shoulders drawn tight against the feel of a gun against the back of his head. He forced himself not to look; there was only the smell of smoke and the gang on the wind, shuffling through the dying of the day as miss Grimshaw ordered the fires put out.

Dutch murmured praise, though, over the maps Arthur tore out of his journal for him, the safest routes out of Valentine and into northern West Elizabeth; he carried the glow of that pride in his chest to Charles, cleaning a rifle under the sunlight turning gold and long as the sun began to set. Arthur watched the motion of Charles’ hand, deft and sure as he swept the rag up the muzzle, the acrid stink and dark stain of oil on his skin.

“You’ve been busy,” Said Charles, as Arthur leaned his hip on the table. The corner of his mouth pulled up in a smile as he glanced at Arthur’s face.

Arthur sneezed as he breathed in the oil smell, acrid and biting the back of his nose; snorting to clear his throat. “And you cleanin’ that gun’s gonna send me out of camp,” He said, mostly to make Charles laugh at him. “What’chu preparin’ for, anyway? Ain’t never seen you with a rifle, thought bows was more your thing.”

Charles wiped his hands clean on the rag, the slant of his mouth sly as he aimed and stared down the rifle’s sight. “I prefer bows,” He agreed, “I’ve even got arrows that could do the job. But I’d rather have something a little stronger for this.” Arthur quirked a brow at him, thumbs hooked on his belt, and Charles’ smile widened into a grin as he heaved himself to his feet, arms spread wide as he rounded the table. “The greatest of gifts, Arthur.”

“An unguarded stagecoach?”

Charles’ eyes rolled as he picked up his saddle from beside his seat, but it was fond, and his voice was soft as he said, “No, you simple-minded fool,” So Arthur didn’t bother to bristle. “Bison. You ever hunted them?”

Snorting a laugh, Arthur took the saddle from Charles and carried it for him, ambling up side-by-side to the hitching posts where Taima was waiting patiently. “I prefer to kill things with my teeth,” Arthur said. “Preferably them that ain’t liable to crush my head just by accident. So, cain’t say I ever really thought tryin’ my luck with ‘em would be a good idea; Hosea raised me with _some_ sense in my head.”

He threw the saddle over Taima’s back and tightened the straps, running his fingers between the girth and her belly to check it wasn’t too tight, and fitted the bridle over her head. She needed a little convincing to take the bit, chewing on it with an irritated flick of her tail, but she settled easy enough once it was comfortable in her mouth. Charles’ eyes lingered on his back all the while, heavy as a touch, but it was an easy weight to bear as Arthur crooned to Taima, smoothing his knuckles down her cheek until she burred softly and forgave him.

The breeze carried the scent of the coming winter cold when Arthur breathed, a whispered promise of it through the rustle of the trees’ leaves, but the weather was fine for now, enough dry days ahead to get safely out of the Heartlands and into the old pine forests west of the Dakota river. Certainly warm enough for a bison hunt, and Arthur wondered if Pearson would say anything about him stealing a cut of meat for himself. He’d never eaten bison.

Mouth twisted thoughtfully, Charles held out the rifle. “Come with me,” He said, as Arthur blinked. “You’re better with rifles than I am.”

Arthur glanced over his shoulder at camp; at Dutch and Hosea and Lenny and Bill and Karen clustered around the table by Pearson’s wagon, pages spread out between them; at miss Grimshaw, forcing John to wash at the washbarrel as the girls all laughed at him, and Reverend stumbling into the wagons without the familiar map of camp now that only the temporary tents were up, and the O’Driscoll jumping and flinching in the pasture every time Mrs Adler so much as looked near him.

“They’ll be fine,” Said Charles, patient without patronising, and his fingers curled around Arthur’s wrist, thumb stroking the hairs. Arthur’s other hand tightened into a fist, but against what he didn’t know. Not Charles, at least, gentle Charles watching his face, wanting his company so earnestly. “They can manage without you.”

Arthur wavered, leaned against the pull of the traces Dutch had put on him so long ago, but there was enough give in them that he tacked up Kelpie and followed Charles out into the Heartland’s plains and pale, towering cliffs and mesas.

-:-

The bison were big, hulking things that shouldn’t have shuffled through the grass and the golden light of the setting sun with quite as much as grace as they did, but they were oddly beautiful, grunting and lowing and charging as Charles rounded them up and penned them in, steady on Taima’s back as she leapt agile over the grass and stone.

It wasn’t so very different from a wolf’s hunt, in the end; stocky Kelpie wasn’t quite so agile, but she was fierce and brave and slipped into the charging herd without fuss, wheeling in front of a young bull trailing behind until he peeled away from the herd in fright. It wasn’t teeth and a mouthful of blood and jaws clamping down against kicking and leaping until it was forced to the ground and killed, but it was just as much a struggle to line up a shot to the head to kill cleanly and find the opening to pull the trigger. The _crack_ of the gunshot echoing through the air and off the stone cliffs and the rising pale towers of the Twin Stacks startled the herd into fleeing across the plains; the young bull staggered, momentum carrying him far, before he fell dead.

And all was well, as Charles told him stories of his tribe as they butchered the young bull - of moving with the bison and all the things that could be made from them, tents and tools and food that didn't spoil for years, horns carved into trinkets - and convinced Arthur to share a story of his own; of hunting elk with Dutch and Hosea and Annabelle one winter at miss Bessie's, running down an enormous bull through the snow and dragging the carcass back to miss Bessie’s ranch; one half butchered for storage, and one half eaten right there in front of her house over the next week, horrifying the little elderly woman who visited with the werewolves lolling about fattened and bloody-faced on her porch.

All was well, until he followed the carrion birds circling in the sky, and the trail of dead bison they were feeding off of. The horns sawn off. The flock of crows and vultures took to the air as Charles dropped down beside the carcass of a bison cow, stumbling and falling to his knees beside its great head laying in the dirt; face slack with the horror of the shotgun blast that had eaten away its face, the meat and skin and bones that fed his people left to rot in the dust, Charles reached out, rested his hand below the crater of its skull on the fur glued stiff by blood, stroking gently.

“Who did this to you?” Charles asked, as softly as hatred for her hunters running dark beneath the upset scrape of his voice would let it go.

“I reckon,” Arthur said, pointing to a column of campfire smoke rising from the base of cliffs just East of the Twin Stacks, “That the folk over there might have an answer for you, Charles. And if they ain’t willing to give it, well,” He rubbed his thumb over the worn grip of his revolver, and his smile bared teeth.

-:-

The O’Driscoll camp stunk of bad whiskey and gunpowder and blood, thick and sour on the wind, and their laughter rang out across the plains as two men howled their amusement to the sky, green vests beneath their dark coats. They had bison horns in a crate, and a werecat’s tawny skin spread out across the ground. Arthur tipped the brim of his hat down over his eyes to hide their shine in the dusk’s purpling gloom as he followed Charles, drawn along on the trail of anger in his wake as he marched up the hill.

The two O’Driscolls lurched to their feet as Charles stopped at the edge of their camp, hands clenched to fists at his side, the firelight collecting beneath his jaw gritted tight, his eyes and his brows that hung low over them, mouth curled in disgust. Arthur kept to Charles’ shadow, ran his hand over his revolver and waited.

One of the men palmed the gun on his hip, knees bending into a half-crouch like he was preparing to draw, but his gaze was on Charles, bold and proud in their camp.

“Did you fools shoot those bison,” Charles murmured, as tight as the muscle in his clenched jaws, so low in his throat it rolled through the ground like a growl, like a threat, like the challenge in Charles’ squared shoulders, the flex of his forearm against the urge to strike. His nose flared, teeth bared and shining in the firelight, bright against his skin as he held still and stared and lifted his chin when the O’Driscolls glanced at each other.

“The hell are you talkin’ about,” One said. “We ain’t done nothin’ to you, you black or red bastard, whatever you are. Git gone!”

Arthur grinned through the dark, a flash of his teeth in a threat shared with Charles, a growl in his chest rumbling through the ground, the distant thunder of his own fury a neat match to Charles’. He tilted his head to show the glow of his eyes, the yellow-green shine of his pupils through the dark, as he drew his revolver; the hammer clicked as he drew it back.

Pushing his growl into his throat to make it a snarl, Arthur caught the gaze of the O’Driscoll crouched to fire; watched him pale, draw his gun and aim, fumbling with the hammer as Arthur raised his revolver - the enormous _boom_ of Charles’ shotgun echoed off the white cliffs stained pink by the sunset, Kelpie and Taima startled into a whinny further down the hill. The O’Driscoll crumpled, his friend leaping back with a shout as Charles bore down on him, lips pulled back from his teeth.

“ _Did you shoot them_!” He demanded, a wolf’s wounded roar furious and raw, shotgun clenched tight in his hand.

Flicking the hammer back to rest Arthur holstered his gun, clapped his hand to Charles’ shoulder as he passed by; a punch sent the O’Driscoll sprawling, and Arthur grabbed the collar of his shirt, hauled him up as the man clutched Arthur’s wrist, nails digging in like he wished he had the claws growing curved and cruel as eagle’s talons on Arthur’s hand. Arthur licked his teeth as he snarled, stared him down as he dragged the O’Driscoll across the ground, his heels digging furrows into the dirt.

The O’Driscoll babbled nonsense, gaze caught on Arthur’s teeth, the fangs that gripped and carnassials that cut; on his throat where a snarl rattled an honest threat, a fury he voiced for Charles to borrow, watching from over the fire as the dusk gave way to the dark. He scrabbled at Arthur’s arm, stinking sour with whiskey and acrid with fear, pulse leaping in his throat, heart pounding in his chest.

“Did you shoot them?” Asked Charles, and the feller wailed.

“ _Yes_!” He cried, louder still when Arthur struck him across the jaw, “YES! Christ, we shot’em, alright? We killed the goddamn bison, now lemme go!” Arthur struck him again, knelt down on the ground and snarling vicious satisfaction as Charles breathed out, pleased as Arthur struck him again and again and again to the face and gut. “We was paid to!” The O’Driscoll wailed, a yelping whimper, clawing at Arthur’s arm holding him tight. “Feller met Colm and paid him to pay us to kill ‘em!”

Arthur looked to Charles, regarding the O’Driscoll from beneath half-lidded eyes, as the feller whined, and looked back to the man.

The O’Driscoll hung from his grip, all slack-mouthed and shining eyes and sour terror, staring at Arthur’s bared teeth as he panted like prey caught between them, heartbeat rabbiting, pounding at his throat. His grip on Arthur’s wrist tightened, even as she shuddered revulsion at the shift of bone and tendon beneath skin, the scrape of Arthur’s claws tearing through his shirt.

He kicked with a flinch, heel scuffing through the dirt, as Arthur’s jaws stretched into a muzzle.

Arthur should, by all rights, let the feller go. He probably wouldn’t have learned his lesson, but he wasn’t much of a threat _right now_ , hanging from Arthur’s grip and cringing as he waited for Arthur to make up his mind. He wasn’t much of anything, though Arthur could forgive him cowardice; at the mercy of a werewolf wasn’t the sort of place that made anyone brave except the stupid, and the O’Driscoll had at least had the brains to be afraid.

Though he had been plenty brave with a friend, and he hadn’t been any sort of coward when he killed the cougar whose skin lay in the Heartland’s dust. Arthur wrinkled his nose against the smell of blood beneath the man’s fingernails, and the feller grunted in fear; a man hanging from Arthur’s fist wasn’t ever going to be much of anything until he was let go, and Arthur had already seen what he was before. The pay as one of Colm’s men was good, too good for most of them to ever stop, and for something so easy as bison murder there wasn’t too much to force him to stop.

“Just kill him Arthur,” Said Charles, cold and implacable.

The O’Driscoll jerked and twisted with a wail, a warble like a whimper and a yelp all at once, chin ducking low to hide his throat, but Arthur grabbed his hair and yanked his head back, and when Arthur’s teeth punched through skin and crushed his throat he couldn’t make very much noise at all. Pressing him flat to the dirt, braced against the O’Driscoll’s chest and the ground, Arthur wrenched his head out and to the side, and spat out the flesh between his jaws beside the feller’s head.

He died like most anyone else Arthur had killed, more slow and messy than a bullet (Arthur hadn’t trusted him to stay fear-docile enough to go for his revolver), but with the copper-sweetness of blood and another stain on Arthur’s soul all the same.

Charles… made a noise. Something in his chest, nearly too quiet to hear and Arthur wasn’t too sure what it even was, but when he looked over Charles was stood between the bodies, acrid with gunpowder, eyes squeezed shut but against what Arthur wasn’t sure. Himself, or Arthur and the blood on his mouth, soaked into the scruff of beard on his chin and turning tacky as it cooled?

Muscle tightened beneath Charles’ skin, and Arthur held himself still, crouched over the poacher on the ground; Charles’ jaw clenched, against something or maybe around something, as his hand tightened around his shotgun, forearm flexing beneath scars. Anger, old and and blood-bitter from hurts, pressed against Arthur’s nose and throat, thick and cloying. He swayed with it, towards or away from it or both at once; it _burned_ on the air, hot as smoke and just as acrid.

Carefully, Arthur stood, weight to his steps to betray himself as he reached out. Charles’ hand flinched as the tough pads of Arthur’s fingers dragged over his knuckles and tendons, but he didn’t pull away when they curled around his wrist, when Arthur stepped in close hip-to-hip and dragged his palm up Charles’ thick forearm to his elbow, cupped the jabbing point of bone. He just stood, and Arthur stood with him, listening to the scrape of his long, thin breaths drawn through gritted teeth.

“Hey,” Arthur rasped, his voice too ugly to be soft the way he wanted it to go but even and flat all the same; undemanding against whatever was in Charles’ head, which Arthur supposed was the best he could offer. “You… y’alright, Charles.” Arthur rubbed his thumb back and forth over Charles’ arm, squeezed his elbow very gently. “It’s okay. S’alright.”

Charles huffed, humourless. “Arthur,” He said, low warning.

Arthur squeezed his arm again, jostled him a little. “S’okay,” Arthur said again, and pressed his side into Charles’, living heat to lean on or to distract or to take anger out on. “Whatever’s got you in your head, it’s okay. I can… I can go if you’d prefer, or I can turn into a wolf.”

Jack liked it when Arthur was a wolf if he was upset, tucking himself up against Arthur’s side or beneath his chin, holding fistfuls of fur as Arthur held him. Some of the girls had liked it, too, them that were in camp now and them that were long gone. Easier to air thoughts to an animal’s face than a human’s.

The faint rasp of Arthur’s calluses against skin hissed in the silence between them. “Y’alright,” He rumbled, and breathed in the smell of anger and gunpowder, and the river water and dirt beneath it. “Y’alright.”

Slowly, Charles let himself be soothed, going lax beneath Arthur’s palm, against his side where Arthur had pressed himself. He let go of a breath, too long and thin to be a sigh, and turned to wrap his arms around Arthur’s waist, palms flattened against his hip and back; the blunt weight of his chin dug into the meat of Arthur’s shoulder where Charles rested his head, and Arthur froze against the heat of him, thick and strong in his nose, warming his gut from where they touched. Charles’ heartbeat thudded, quickened when Arthur returned the hug.

“S’alright,” Arthur said, a thrum in his chest without the space to speak into. “Y’alright.”

“I should have been better than that, Arthur,” Said Charles thickly, words caught and torn soundless on whatever was lodged in his throat. “I shouldn’t have _told you_ to-”

God, Arthur thought, closing his eyes, he was terrible at this. Worse than terrible - absolutely useless. A no good rotten idiot, if he couldn’t even help a friend the way Charles had helped him. Only good for killing and being mean, out of place in spaces where folk didn’t need that of him, and by all rights it should have been someone who _could_ help Charles turned to, like Hosea. Only Hosea didn’t hunt with humans, Dutch notwithstanding, and everyone else was _worse_ than Arthur, if Charles even decided to let them see his hurts.

The women would have been a better choice, unflappable Tilly or gentle Mary-Beth or no-nonsense miss Grimshaw or reliable Abigail, or even Karen for a good old vent. Not Arthur, moody and brooding and angry more often than not.

The blood on Arthur’s mouth from the man whose throat he bit out was smearing over Charles’ soft shirt. Each year he left for a month to mope and chew on the old wounds on his heart, because he didn’t like to be around people at the best of times but summer and its memories made it impossible. He was moody, and irritable, and more likely to kill than be kind to those outside the gang, and sometimes cruel to those within it too.

“Don’t you worry none,” Arthur said, rubbing blood from his mouth and cleaning his palm on the leg of his jeans. No way to be discreet about it, really, but Arthur would help the girls with washing them when they got back, and Charles didn’t seem to mind. “He needed killin’, an’ it ain’t like I’m good for nothing else. I’m sorta glad,” Arthur added, mouth curling as Charles stiffened, muscles of his back tightening like the bristling of fur with something that might have been affront. “If you was any better than this I’da thought you was a saint. Cain’t hardly see a thing through the light of that halo you got on your head mister Smith.”

Charles swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, pressing against Arthur’s shoulder. "Oh Arthur," He murmured, and beneath Arthur’s jaw his shoulders squared, beneath his hands his spine straightened; Charles pulled away, just enough to catch Arthur’s chin, turn his head, and press his mouth to Arthur’s.

Firmly, and decisively, Charles kissed him, and God help him Arthur closed his eyes and let him.

There was nothing else he could do, caught fast by Charles’ fingers sliding over the nape of his neck, palm carefully cradling Arthur’s throat; by the little thread of want rising hot from his skin beside the embers of his anger that still burned faintly, and the river water smell and the scent of the clean, growing kind of dirt he carried, subtle over the cheek Arthur nosed as a flex of Charles’ fingers at his nape tilted his head, by the smell of the gang they all shared; by Charles, the fierceness of him, the gentleness of him, the _goodness_ of him, to be angry at the wasted deaths of bison.

Arthur softened his mouth; didn’t kiss back, didn’t yield, but held Charles close all the same, palms bracketing his wide hips, knee turned out to the side a little because if Charles bared teeth Arthur would show belly, placating and docile and willing.

He was warm against the tops of Arthur’s thighs, and Charles’ heartbeat thudded hard beside Arthur’s, and his hands stroked so softly over Arthur’s skin, calluses catching on hairs and shirt and the leather of Arthur’s belt. Arthur whined against Charles’ mouth, soundless in his throat where it caught on Charles’ palm - he didn’t know why. Or maybe Arthur did, heat in his gut and blood on his teeth and snared in the threads of want rising from Charles’ skin, hot like the fire that turned Arthur’s damning desire to ash all those months ago, made embers of the scribblings of Charles’ imagined bare shoulder.

There was nothing imagined about the shape of him now, the breadth of his shoulders and middle and the deepness of his chest, the strength in his arms and hands and the weight in his gut.

Not yet, Arthur thought, half desperate, though he didn’t know if it was a truth or a prayer; not ever. He _wanted_ but he _shouldn’t have_ , and although he had always been a thief and taken what wasn’t his Charles deserved better, and Arthur was damned no matter what but he’d be sure to give Charles that chance if it killed him. Dutch had raised him loyal, after all, and Charles was as worthy of being loyal to as anyone else in the gang - more than anyone else, maybe, as he snorted amusement into Arthur’s scruffy cheek and settled back on his heels, full mouth shining wet, studying Arthur’s face.

His jaw worked, rolling taste around his mouth, and he grimaced faintly. “That was a mistake,” He said, and Arthur wasn’t so sure if he was talking about tasting the dead O’Driscoll’s blood or kissing Arthur at all.

A shadow darkened Charles’ eyes, made them sharp when they might not have meant to be, and his face stayed unreadable. It could easily have been either; it might just as easily be both. It might be a third thing, too, but Arthur didn’t count that one as something ought to be regretted. O’Driscolls were the worst of criminals, and poachers were the worst of men, so the two together weren’t nothing to fret over.

Arthur stepped away before Charles could decide which was the bigger regret, head turned a little to pacify whatever anger still smoked in Charles’ scent by showing the side of his throat and jaw, and cleared his throat. “G’wan,” He said, nodding to Taima grazing contentedly a little ways down the hill. “I’ll sort all this out, don’t you worry none.”

Charles lingered a while, silent, as Arthur stripped the bodies and camp of money and medicine and valuables, took a shotgun from Kelpie’s saddle to disguise the tearing of the O’Driscoll’s throat; it made mincemeat of the man, but another shot buried into his shoulder served well enough to hide a werebeast’s kill. He was gone when Arthur looked up, setting the werecat’s skin beneath a large stone, patting its broad top in an apology for not having the shovel to dig a proper grave, so Arthur swung into Kelpie’s saddle and made his way back home.

Later, stretched out on his bedroll on the floor of his tent, all his things packed by miss Grimshaw into his wagon, Arthur drew bison. One, broad and proud as it pushed through the grass, golden light settling on its dark fur until it glowed softly, and the other shrunken in death on the ground, the bone of its face bared, a shotgun blast having eaten away at its skull. _I do not often wish death on folk,_ He wrote beneath, _But for all my sins I can at least say that for them that are exceptions to that rule I am not above being the death I wish on them. It was the best I could offer Charles for the bison they murdered. I got nothing else to give him, in the end._

_The wilds has always been where I belong, for all that Dutch has kept me in the borders between it and civilisation, and the wilds is cruel and I have been born cruel to live in it. I am a killer, and a hunter - each year I spend the height of summer living off of what I can kill, hiding away from the people I am almost certain I love. My life has grown longer than I thought it would ever go on what I kill, man and beast, and one day it will be cut short when I am killed in turn - I have made my peace with it, so long as being killed protects my family. There is nothing else I know; so I cannot understand why Charles kissed me, when a man so kind as he ought to hate what I am liable to do, biting out a poacher’s throat without feeling bad when I needed Charles and his kindness after saving Micah, which ought to have felt good._

_I wonder if living the way I do has broken something in me. I am a wolf, and it is the wild places I belong to, but I have been made to belong to a human family, too, and there is nothing in me that says I do not want that. If there were, I would not love Jack so fierce, or Hosea who has always lived so easily as human, or Dutch who has always been so good to me, even when I were young and wild and stole food from his camp._

_I would not want Charles, who I think might be the best man I have ever met._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god this more than twice the size of the usual chapters, I'm so sorry.


	23. Chapter 23

Lenny hesitated at the treeline, lingering at the mouth of the trail to camp - a thread of anxiety on the wind, in the hard beat of his heart against his ribs loud even from his place on Maggie’s back - and hid that he was hesitating by reaching down and running his fingers beneath Maggie’s girth.

Arthur took a drag on his cigarette as Bill and Brown Jack shifted impatiently a ways away, Karen on Old Belle adjusting the lie of her hair on her shoulders. He held the smoke for long moments, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against a tree, and breathed it out through his nose to hide any waver in his breathing; it wouldn’t do any good to betray his own nervousness as Lenny’s gaze sought his through the morning’s pale light, the gloom to human eyes.

The kid looked fine in his dark duster coat, black bandanna around his throat. Young, smooth-faced, a tightness to his eyes and mouth, but fine; he had a good head on his shoulders and enough know-how to open a safe or two and get out with no bloodshed. Beneath him Maggie snorted and pawed the ground, ears pricked eager for work - she was a fine, strong horse who would see him safe - and for all his faults Bill was a reliable enough grunt, a steady gun and good at orders, and Arthur had already threatened him to follow Lenny’s. Karen was Karen, experienced enough to cover Lenny’s lack of it and knowing well enough to trust _Arthur’s_ trust in the kid.

He didn’t say any of it of course, just drifted close to pat Maggie’s neck, slipped his cigarette to his other hand as he rested his hand on Lenny’s wrist in the safety behind his horse. “You’ll do good, kid,” Arthur said, quiet enough Bill wouldn’t hear more than a murmur, the guttural rumble of Arthur’s voice gone too-quiet, and Lenny’s dark eyes snapped to the pale shine of Arthur’s; he checked Maggie’s girth for him, tightening the straps and lengthening the stirrups a little so Lenny could tilt his heels down properly. “You get in, you get out, you come back safe, and you’ll do good, Lenny. Don’t you worry none.”

A swallow bobbed along Lenny’s long throat, fingers curling against his knee. “Yeah?” He said.

There wasn’t a question about it, of course - couldn’t be, because it was a certainty, a truth as much as anything could be a truth; Dutch and Hosea wouldn’t have had Lenny lead the job if there was any sort of doubt about him. But Lenny was young, still - a man and grown but not quite all the way just yet - and Arthur remembered too well the fear of fucking up jobs when it was Dutch’s faith in him on the line, faith which had made Dutch stretch his neck out to Hosea to bring Arthur along because of course their boy was ready.

It was a big job, a big ask for someone still a little wet ‘round the ears, but the same as Dutch’d had faith in Arthur, Arthur had faith in Lenny. So he smiled, a quirk of the corner of his mouth, and held Lenny’s gaze just long enough for him to see the honesty before he politely flicked it away. “If the job goes bad,” He said, and Lenny’s eyes widened a bit, “You just blame old Bill over there, ain’t no one’s gonna question it.”

“Hey!”

Lenny breathed out, a short and harsh bark of a laugh, and when he sat up straight in the saddle there was a steel to his spine, shoulders squared beneath his coat as he gathered Maggie’s reins. “I won’t let you down Arthur.”

“No,” Arthur agreed, “Y’ain’t gonna,” And reached up to clap a hand on Lenny’s shoulder, squeezing before he nudged the boy on, retreating back to his tree. There was nothing Lenny could do to disappoint him. “Now g’wan, all of you git! Bank’ll be busy soon if you don’t get a move on.”

Karen saluted with a chuckle, “Aye aye, Arthur,” She said, and clicked Old Belle into a trot, slow to let Lenny and Bill catch up before they kicked off into a gallop.

Arthur listened to the fading thunder of hoofbeats for a long while before he put his cigarette to his lips, ankles crossed as he leaned against the tree. He tipped his head back to watch the smoke trailing upwards, towards the v of goose in the sky hooting and honking to themselves, the circling of a hawk through the air, riding high on the wind. It didn’t take long for the hawk to find prey, folding its wings to stall and drop, stretching them out at the bottom of its dive to skim the grass, legs reaching out, talons curved and cruel-

The rabbit squealed as those talons dug deep, and Arthur watched the hawk struggle with its kicking and squirming, wings flapping. But when it rose back into the sky with its prize the rabbit hanging from its grip was big and thick with muscle beneath its fur, and the hawk's piercing cry was loud with pride.

Camp was quiet behind him, a few murmurs and shouts as miss Grimshaw fussed over the last of the packing, overnight tents folded away. Jack’s sleepy mumble as he was tucked safely away into the back of one of the wagons to rest the last of the morning. A few horses whickered, harnesses jangling as they shifted and pawed the ground, impatient for work; their O’Driscoll squealed against whatever mrs Adler snarled at him, some threat in the wounded scrape of her voice, but John pushed his way between them with a raspy shout and stopped any possible killing.

Abigail grunted at him, which probably meant John had pissed her off to leave the door open for a killing anyway, but the O’Driscoll was safe enough from that; Dutch had thrown his wing over the boy same as he had mrs Adler, there wouldn’t be any real harm in his future from any of them.

Arthur turned his head to footsteps through the copse of trees, but it was only Micah on the wind, and Arthur raised his cigarette to his mouth again. “ _Arthur_ ,” Drawled Micah, low and pleased as he slunk out from the dark between the trees. “Up a little early, cowpoke? Didn’t change your mind ‘bout robbing Valentine, huh?”

“Naw,” Arthur said, smoke trailing from his mouth. “Just wanted to see Lenny off.”

Something glittered in Micah’s pale eyes as he stepped up against the entrance to camp, leaning his shoulder on the tree opposite the trail they had worn into the dirt. The knife he took from his belt gleamed cold in his hand as he cleaned beneath his fingernails with the point, ears turned to the road; head low, polite and unassuming but a pull at his mouth, a tightness between brows hanging low over his eyes.

From behind the curtain of lank hair fallen over his face Micah murmured, “You’re real close to that kid, ain’tchu Morgan?” His gaze flicked to Arthur’s face, moustache twisting with the beginning of a smile, and Arthur took another drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke between them as he stared back. “Awful close. _I_ wouldn’t’ve trusted him on a job this important, would’a done it myself.”

“I’m sure,” Arthur said, and watched whitetail deer further up the road graze, eyes and ears trained on them all the while. “I suppose it’s a real good thing Dutch decides who to trust on jobs and not you.”

“Oh, for _sure_ ,” Said Micah, straightening up from his slouch against the tree to watch the deer, foot hooked over his ankle. His knife flashed as he scraped dirt from beneath his nails. “I just find it real strange. Werewolves and a werebear and humans all intermixin’. And here _I_ am, serving as best I can for the same amount of time as that redskin, and you’re all cozy with him while _I’m_ still treated like I got mange.” Micah’s lips curled, showing a fang as he raised his chin. “Strange,” He said, and glanced at Arthur through his hair, an edge to his smile as sharp as his knife’s. “Ain’t my fault I ain’t used to running with so many folk.”

Tapping ash from the end of his cigarette, Arthur let a grumble roll through his chest, voice so low it scraped itself ragged on the back of his throat. “I don’t know what you think you’re insinuatin’,” He said, and took a drag, “But it don’t got the weight I think you think it’s got, else you’re either dumb as hell or real, _real_ deaf to what goes on during Dutch and Hosea’s _reading_ time.”

“No need to be touchy, I ain’t insinuatin’ nothing, cowpoke,” Said Micah, false-sweet, hands spread against the air to show an empty palm. “Just an observation, that’s all.”

“And I don’t care too much for your observations,” Arthur told him, and watched Micah relax against the tree from the corner of his eye. “So I find myself wonderin’, Micah, what it is you want, ‘cause we both know I cain’t hardly tolerate your company even at the best of times.”

Micah shifted, settling more comfortably against the tree, but his gaze was on the road running past the entrance of camp, the shine of his eyes on a rider trotting by who scattered the grazing deer, and who glared at them from the saddle, hand tightening around a rifle he kept pointed upward. Micah grinned, jagged teeth flashing as he palmed his revolver on his hip, and the rider had the sense to leave well enough alone, spurring his horse into a canter.

A coyote wailed from the Heartlands’ plains, a lonely hunting cry muted behind the stone cliffs. Miss Grimshaw orchestrated the waking up of camp as the sun rose slow with the autumn, her yelling and yowling rattling the trees’ dying leaves and startling a few birds into the air; one of the horses shrieked alarm, hushed by the O’Driscoll whose voice shook and broke. Dutch’s voice boomed as he swanned through camp, cheerful enough to quell most complaints about the early hour and Hosea taking care of those he couldn’t.

“Can’t a fella spend a few minutes with his brother?” Asked Micah, soft - almost too soft to hear, even with a werewolf’s hearing. “We’re the sons of Dutch, Morgan; two killers he’s brought in from the wilds, two beasts forced into wearing the wrong skin, and ain’t neither of us all that used to human company.” He licked his lips, gaze flicking over to Arthur’s; his voice raw enough it whispered. “We’re survivors, brother. World makes all us beastfolk survivors, but you and me? We do anything we gotta to see the end of the next day.”

Shifting against the tree again, Micah’s head tilted as he turned to look at Arthur - held high even under the weight of Arthur’s unblinking gaze. “I’ve found myself wondering, Morgan, what it is that’s kept you with Dutch all these years. Why you follow him. He ain’t no beastman - take away his guns and he cain’t stand up to a werewolf, and it won’t take no effort for old man Hosea to fall to you. All these years you’ve been sitting on a fortune, and you ain’t seized it. Run your own gang. Made a real pack of wolves, not whatever-” He waved his hand towards camp, “- _This_ is.”

Arthur lit a new cigarette on the embers of the old, and put it between his lips as he ground out the first beneath his boot. The smoke settled hot in his chest, pleasant weight against the chill of the morning. He chewed on its end as he gnawed the words, rolling the angry, defensive snarl around his mouth, weighing the instinct to drive Micah away against the pull of Dutch’s leash around his throat.

He blew out the smoke. “They’re the only family I got,” Arthur said, because it was the only truth he had ever known. Dutch and Hosea had raised him. Given him food even when the three of them hardly had a can between them. Taught him how to change his shape properly, because he’d never managed it reliably under his father after his mother died, and how to read, because he’d never learned that at all, and how to fire a gun so he didn’t have to rely on his claws.

It had been Dutch to save his life, after Eliza and Isaac’s deaths had driven him into killing until he was killed, stumbling over him bleeding out after getting gored by a boar. It had been Hosea who taught him to write down the things in his head that he couldn’t speak, no matter how dumb they might have seemed to anyone else. It had been Hosea’s miss Bessie who came closest to the faint memories of his mother Arthur carried, warm and safe and loving him because Hosea loved him and she loved Hosea. It had been Dutch’s Annabelle who had come second closest, and who taught him how to gentle his bites when Dutch took on a few more werewolves to scold instead of bleed. It was because of Dutch and Hosea Arthur was alive at all; werewolves didn’t live long alone.

“Humans and wolves who ain’t your blood, Morgan, ain’t no kind of family in my book.”

Arthur took another drag on his cigarette, blew it out to the open sky above the trees. “Then I don’t reckon I’d want to read your book, mister Bell,” Said Arthur, and lifted his chin to Micah’s gaze crawling over the side of his face, staring half-lidded and unconcerned into Micah’s burning, pale eyes, “Since I got an inkling of what kind of folk you think my family are, and that’s enough like the thinking of my daddy who _was_ my blood that I don’t want no part of it no more. We might be survivors, but I ain’t no lone wolf poacher coasting off other’s kills.”

Rearing back with a pull on his lips like he was baring teeth, Micah held Arthur’s gaze and Arthur grew his nails into claws, curling them against the air even as he stayed loose against the tree. But Micah was only grinning, dark and cruel with humour at some joke only he knew, as he stepped back into the dark of the trees, shrugging off his dark jacket and starting in on the buttons on his shirt. “Poachers kill too, Morgan,” Micah drawled, “We’re just smarter ‘bout it than all them upfront hunters like you and your redskin.”

Arthur tightened his jaw, hard enough the bones creaked with how tightly he held onto his human face, against the urge to shift and kill and be done with it - the instinct was there, the snarling challenge in his throat he could throw out between them, his size and his pelt that had been torn ragged by scars from fights he had won before a rare pride against a wolf who was nothing against some of those other beasts he’d had to kill.

The chain Dutch had around his throat pulled, a warning jerk, and Arthur put his cigarette to his lips instead, let the smoke heavy and hot in his chest soothe the urge.

Either he’d get his chance or Micah would be proved trustworthy, and while Arthur trusted Dutch he didn’t trust Dutch’s occasional favouritism. Reverend and Uncle were harmless enough, charming in small doses, but Micah was a liability at the best of times, and he’d already proved just how far he could go at his worst and possibly further still.

The smoke curled from his mouths in puffs and trails as Arthur half-raised his cigarette like a toast as Micah slunk by, dull blond and head low between his shoulders, tail curling up over his back like he had a rank he hadn’t earned, and said, “Here’s hoping you ain’t make it back from scouting the trail, Bell.”

Micah's head didn't turn, but his ears did, and Arthur smiled into the trees’ gently rustling leaves as they yellowed with the autumn, something vicious in his chest settling low and glowing with satisfaction. It was as hollow and formless as the smoke trailing from the end of his cigarette, ash bitter on his tongue from missing a chance to get rid of him, but it was warm and felt good all the same, and Arthur carried it close as he leaned against the tree and watched Micah’s retreating back.

-:-

The sun rose, bright in the sky, and Arthur enjoyed the warmth of it through the trees as he watched and waited on the edge of camp, turning his head to sounds and scents, the birdsong and the hiss of the wind past stone and through grass, the whispering of trees’ leaves, the stink of men and horse as riders passed by, the bite of colder days ahead. A few riders stopped and grunted questions, but Arthur made sure the brim of his hat hid his eyes and his lips covered teeth and told them he was waiting on his son.

Lenny didn’t make him wait long, thundering down the road flanked either side by Bill and Karen and pulling back on the reins until Maggie skidded to a stop, teeth bright against his skin as he grinned from ear to ear. Arthur swallowed the instinctive bristle, and ground out another cigarette beneath his boot as he stepped up beside the kid; Lenny swayed towards him, a laugh breaking free of his throat, high and loud with joy, and he gripped Arthur’s shoulder hard.

“We got it!” He said. “We got their money!” Arthur gripped him back, rumbling pleased in his throat, his growl high with his own joy, his own pride as he murmured praise, but Lenny only shook his head, another laugh knocking loose. “No, Arthur - we got _all_ of it, we cleared out the bank! _All_ of it, every single safe they got we opened!”

“ _He_ opened,” Karen said, nodding to Lenny, and she was smiling just as wide as she pushed hair away from her face. “Got us away nice and safe, too. He did good.”

Arthur squeezed Lenny close, arm around his ribs, knocking his temple against Lenny’s stubbled jaw. “You did _real good_ , kid,” He said, gruff and short and tight with his own pride, and let him go with a sturdy thump on Lenny’s back. Lenny’s eyes were bright, shining and wide with the startled joy of the approval, and Arthur clapped his hand to Lenny’s, throat tight with all the things he had no words to say. “Knew you was gonna do good. G’wan, get to camp - Dutch’ll be real proud of you, for sure.”

Behind the kid's back, Arthur squeezed shut his eyes for a moment before he set off down the trail. He had known, of course he had known, that Lenny was right to lead the job. Dutch was rarely wrong and Hosea more rarely still, and Lenny had never done anything to make Arthur doubt him. But it was still nice to be proved right, and nicer still to think of the twist to Micah's face when he heard of Lenny's success.

Dutch’s voice boomed out as Arthur trotted up the path into camp, and he busied himself patting one of the Suffolk punches who’d pull the girl’s wagon, stroking her nose and running his knuckles down her cheek, as Dutch flung an arm around Lenny’s shoulders and held up the saddlebags heavy with money and gold to the cheers of camp. “Well _done_ , son!” Crowed Dutch, squeezing Lenny close and swaying with the force of his own joy, and reached out to clap a hand on Bill’s arm, Karen too busy nosing into Sean’s cheek to pay much mind to him. “And well done Bill and Karen, of course! Our boy couldn't've done it without you!”

A blush stained Bill’s cheeks, and he ducked his head below the brim of his hat, scratching his beard. “Weren’t nothing, Dutch,” He said, gruff and too obviously pleased.

“Oh, it were something!” Dutch told him, and his eyes twinkled brightly. “Ain’t never met a fella who robbed a bank on his own and lived to tell. You done well, Bill.”

There wasn’t any time for the kind of celebration robbing a bank deserved, of course, so Arthur checked all of the drafts pulling the wagons in turn, adjusting the harnesses to be comfortable and making sure the traces were strong, as Dutch locked away the earnings, split the bank money between camp and Lenny and Bill and Karen, and the savings chest hidden safe until it needed using to buy their own land somewhere far from civilisation.

Little Jack chattered away to Abigail from the back of a wagon, though he stopped long enough to wave at Arthur as he helped Javier tie their spare horses to the wagons, the rope long enough for them to walk comfortably but not so long as to get tangled in with any of the others - the horses not with their riders on guard left untethered because they could be trusted to follow. Trelawny appeared here and there through camp, orchestrating miss Grimshaw’s attack on the wagons one moment and conjuring a songbird for Jack to hold the next, never in one place long enough to actually catch miss Grimshaw’s ire for making a nuisance of himself. Charles helped miss Grimshaw with checking the packing of the wagons, making sure everything was in its place, that nothing would fall off or break apart or get lost in the general clutter that always came with moving camp.

The overlook was strange, Arthur thought as he lingered where the cooking fire had been, now that it was bare of tents and campfires, almost rid of the gang entirely - familiar pathways worn bare of grass made unfamiliar without the tents. The gang’s chatter loud with sudden space to fill and no cloth walls to muffle them, miss Grimshaw on her warpath and Bill loudly telling the story of the bank robbery to Javier, who chuckled obligingly now and then but mostly ignored him, and Sean dancing through camp belting out a song boasting about his magnificent Karen.

But even with the noise, the chatter of camp, the hiss of the wind, the squawks and chirps of alarm from birds startled into the air, Arthur and Bill and Hosea stilled, heads turned to the entrance of camp, and the chatter quieted with their stillness. Even through the thundering of hooves, the stink of horse-sweat and gunpowder on the wind, the sour acrid taste of fear with the fear-shrieks of horses, too-many and none of them friends, even with Micah hurling himself through camp, baying in terror, mouth and teeth and shoulder red with blood, the _crack_ of gunshots rang out clear, and loud.

The dirt burst open, O'Driscoll bullets burying themselves in the ground, and Sean’s face burst with it.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning, as usual; **lots of death and woundings in this one.**

They scrambled behind cover as the O’Driscolls dismounted inside the treeline; Charles beside Hosea dragging Arthur behind the food wagon. Dutch shouted orders over the draft horses’ shrieking, Jack’s frightened scream - reaching out from behind the girl’s wagon to catch Tilly, snagging Karen who stared at Sean prone across the ground. “God _damnit_ Micah!” He roared, and lurched out of cover to grab his scruff and drag him to safety as well.

“I told you he was a liability!”

“Now ain’t the time, Arthur!” Dutch snarled, and his eyes flicked across camp, quick and glittering with fear. “Hosea!”

Arthur scanned camp with him, even as he said, “With us!”

Half-deaf from the gunshots echoing through the air as Dutch and the others started firing back, the horses with eyes rolling white wailing their terror to the sky, the orders from their side and the O’Driscolls shouted over the din, the air too choked with the smell of gunpowder to smell. But poking his head past the side of the wagon he could see, and everyone had found themselves somewhere safe - Abigail in the back of the girls’ wagon, wrapped around Jack as he clutched tight her dress, miss Grimshaw with Tilly and Mary-Beth and Karen and Dutch, hand tight around one of his revolvers as she fired back by his side.

Swanson scrabbled up into Strauss’ wagon as mrs Adler and Uncle shot half-blindly into the trees behind it, Javier and Bill and John at Arthur’s wagon. The stink of blood drifted on the wind as mrs Adler killed a few O’Driscoll’s, roaring her grief and fury with every pull of her rifle’s trigger, hair snarled wild around her head as their pet O’Driscoll cowering beside Abigail covered his head, useless to help when he wasn’t allowed guns of his own.

But Arthur's gaze caught on Sean, limp across the dirt in the middle of camp, safe from shots now that the attention was on them firing back. Sean, with the left side of his face bloody and crumpled in on itself, a spreading stain of blood beneath his head, soaking dark the earth. Sean, his chest rising and falling slowly, grass stirring weakly below his nose.

Sean, alive, and Arthur’s heart pulled tight.

He shoved his revolver and his gunbelt full of bullets into Charles’ hand, “Cover me,” He said - loud over the gunfire, wincing with every shot ringing out - and darted out from behind the wagon.

Charles’ hand reached for the back of his shirt, fingers scraping but not grabbing as he shouted for him, eyes wide, and Arthur crouched, wincing through the noise and acrid stink of gunpowder and gunsmoke as he hauled Sean over his shoulder. Blood smeared sticky over his hair as he lurched back behind the wagon, reached for Charles who reached for him and pulled him back to safety, Hosea’s hand clamping tight on his elbow.

“ _Arthur_!” Charles demanded, and Arthur forgave him the blunt teeth he bared because he clutched the back of Arthur’s neck, the soft hairs at the nape, breath trembling as he swayed. His hands shook, gun trembling as he pressed flat his palm to the bump at the top of Arthur’s spine. “What were you _thinking_ , you fool!”

Clutching back, Charles’ wrist thick in Arthur’s hold, pulse pounding against the pad of his thumb, Arthur told him, “Sean’s alive,” and Charles’ mouth clicked shut. He turned to Karen, and her wide, hollow eyes staring at him. A few more O’Driscolls fell with a _thump_ to the ground. “Karen! Grab a horse!”

“Arthur-”

“He’s alive!”

Gunshots from Arthur’s revolver _cracked_ through the air as he flung himself through camp, teeth gritted with Sean’s weight over his shoulder, Sean’s blood thick on the air, as Karen pulled out a knife strapped to her thigh and cut free one of the spare horses, rearing and shrieking. But the horse was steady enough for Arthur to throw Sean across her rump, grabbing her makeshift halter and looping the trailing rope into reins as Karen hiked up her skirts and hopped up on the horse’s back.

Something in her settled, turned hard, as she grabbed the reins from Arthur’s hand and pulled hard on them, forcing the mare’s chin into her throat so she couldn’t toss her head back and rear. Her eyes were wild behind the ringlets of her hair, and Arthur shrugged his satchel from his shoulder and slung it over hers. “I got a hundred dollars in there,” He said. “Keep your head down, don't say nothing to no one 'til you get that little Irish bastard to the Valentine doctor. ‘Tween the two of us we might got enough to see him safe.”

On the other side of the overlook Javier cursed. “Strauss is dead!”

Karen kicked the mare into a gallop, streaking out of the overlook and into the trees, the thundering of hooves lost in the din. Wagon walls and trees splintered around missed shots, dirt and grass kicked up into the air - Strauss, when Arthur looked for him, was laid out in the back of the ammunitions wagon like he’d been thrown there, blood staining dark his white shirt over his heart and gut. John hissed as a bullet grazed the back of his hand, Bill bellowing a challenge, teeth bared as he roared. Hosea yelped, but when Arthur followed the tightening of his heart and spun around it was only his hat that had been shot to the ground.

The Overlook was too open, too bare, too exposed. The O’Driscolls darting between the trees circling camp were thinning but not soon enough, not for how few of them were firing back and two down already; not with little Jack burrowing into his mother as he cried with fear. Dutch killed one O’Driscoll and Charles another but still more flashed through the dark between the tree trunks; a few ran, eyes and teeth flashing in their grins as they mounted horses and hollered for backup.

Arthur grabbed Dutch’s arm, bent his head close to hiss, “We ain’t makin’ it out, Dutch.”

Dutch’s face, twisted in fury at the O’Driscoll’s daring, tightened further, dark eyes glittering hard like flint. “Don’t say that, Arthur!” He said, and pushed him down to a crouch as a bullet burst through the wagon wall overhead, splinters scattering over their shoulders. “I ain’t lettin’ those bastards win!”

Baring his teeth, Arthur dug claws into Dutch’s sleeve; frustration a snarl as he said, “There ain’t no fighting ‘em off! Colm’s got the men to waste, an’ he’s gonna get the Pinkertons down on us soon if we ain’t killed ‘fore then! We don’t got the people to win this one, we already lost two.” He swept his hand out over camp, gesturing at all them, them that could fire back and them that could only hide and pray. “ _All_ ’a us is gonna die if we ain’t smart about this! We gotta get folk out.”

Jaw clenched tight, eyes narrow and hard as he stared Arthur down, Dutch blew out a breath through his nose, harsh and quick with the fury hot in his blood and on the air, as Arthur raised his chin. “Then _what_ ,” Dutch said tightly, clipped, “Do you propose, Arthur?”

It was only common sense to run, but it settled as ash in Arthur's mouth, dry and hollow, all the same; it made them too vulnerable to be out on the roads, the wagons slow, folk bunched tight together, but they were vulnerable _here_ as well. It was all too much like Blackwater all over again, the lawmen circling camp, hounds at their heels as they grabbed what they could and ran. But they had survived leaving Blackwater, and they had survived other attacks on camp before then too, and Arthur refused to think it a choice not to survive this one.

He looked out over camp again, curling his claws into his knees and useless with his gun flashing from the muzzle fire and sunlight in Charles’ hand and not his. But by some stroke of good luck the horses were all alive as they reared and shrieked, bound to the wagons to either pull or be led, eyes rolling white in terror as they reared and struck out at nothing and everything all at once. Some wounded, blood sticky down flanks and shoulders and barrels, but alive and strong still; the horses left loose all lingering nearby, half-rearing, ears flat, but staying and waiting for orders.

Their fear stank sour on the wind, but their horses had always been trained brave. Even terrified out of their wits their clever drafts would obey, and they were strong enough to drag along those that weren’t

“Everyone!” He barked, and it didn’t carry far, his voice tearing with the strain of speaking loud and cut up in the gunfire and the orders the O’Driscolls shouted, but it didn’t _need_ to carry far; Hosea, beside Charles at Pearson’s wagon, carried it for him. “Up in the wagons, now! Get outta camp!”

A few more O’Driscolls fell, slumping against the trees, across the ground, the shouting and gunshots all starting to quiet as they retreated, just long enough to get others to fill their ranks again. They wouldn’t get another chance, and Arthur grabbed Dutch and shoved him up into the driver’s seat of the girl’s wagon. “All’a you, get gone, now! We ain’t got time for dawdlin’. Bill, mrs Adler, Javier, John, you ride on guard; Lenny, drive my wagon for me.”

Dutch reached for him, grabbed the back of his neck and forced him to still long enough to study his face. Arthur growled, low in his throat - not a threat but an anxious warning, eyes on the trees where the O’Driscolls wouldn’t take long to come back. “Arthur,” He said, soft and thick, heavy in the air between them.

Arthur shook him off, grabbed Micah by the snout and scruff, tight and cruel, claws digging in, as he dragged him over to Pearson’s wagon. Micah growled, no space in the grip of Arthur’s hand to bare teeth, but his legs braced stiff against the ground, scraping furrows into the dirt; hackles bristling and tail rising high over his back, ears flat against his neck as he tried to wrench against Arthur’s hold, either free of it or with it, claws reaching out.

Grunting, Arthur threw him into the back of the wagon where the Reverend was crouching low behind the crates. Claws screeched hollow and wooden against the wagon floor as Micah scrabbled, landed with a thump and a snarl against the crates. He swung around to snap, jaws wide, but Arthur struck him across the face hard enough his head snapped to the side with the blow, and snarled back an honest threat low and grating in his throat and mouth, pushed out through teeth he bared, that made Pearson whimper and scurry away. Micah held his gaze, head raised, jagged teeth flashing-

Arthur grabbed him by the back of the neck before he could bite again and shoved him down against the wagon's floor, his jaws clicking shut with the force of it. Micah struggled, or tried to - pulling against Arthur's grip, kicking uselessly against the floor - and Arthur dug in his claws hard enough blood sweetened the air, coppery as Arthur pulled back the corners of his mouth and showed every one of the wolf's teeth lining his jaws.

Micah tucked his tail and lay down, head turned away to placate. He had the sense to stay where he was as Arthur shoved himself off to see to the gang.

Arthur watched from the edge of the overlook as the gang filed out one by one, wagons and riders reaching the roads, turning to the safety of West Elizabeth beyond the river, until was only Charles and Taima and Kelpie to linger with him in the shade of the trees. Charles’ hand gripped his tight, even as Arthur tried to push him away, up into the saddle; his head shaking even before Arthur'd opened his mouth.

“Arthur,” He said, plaintive, swinging around to face him, reaching up with his other hand to cup the back of Arthur’s neck. His fingers dug in, gripping hard as his face twisted, crumpling on itself. “Whatever you're thinking, stop thinking it _._ ”

“I’m gonna give ‘em an easy target,” Arthur told him, and gritted his teeth against a grimace as Charles’ head fell, eyes squeezed shut. “A wolf always runs for home if it can, I’ll distract ‘em. Ain’t gonna lead ‘em back like Micah did, so I’ll be going north if I can.” He dragged his hand up Charles' arm, calluses rasping against the hairs until he cupped the elbow, fingers curled loose over that bony point. “G’wan,” He said softly, and nudged his hat over, pressed it onto the crown of Charles’ head. “I’ll be expecting it back, mind, so you take care.”

The overlook was quiet as they stayed locked together, but it wouldn’t be quiet for much longer; the thunder of fresh hoofbeats rolled through the air, shouts faint on the wind, carrion birds croaking and screeching as they circled the air. But Arthur let Charles linger, closing his eyes to breathe in the scent of him, the rich dirt smell and the riverwater and the shadow of gunsmoke, the mingled stink of the gang that claimed him as one of their own, as a coyote yipped to its pack at the base of the overlook’s cliffs.

“They’ll kill you.”

Gently, Arthur lifted Charles’ hand, pressed it to the side of head, made his fingers trace the chunk taken out of his ear. “Ain’t no one’s been so lucky yet,” He said, and stepped away. Charles’ hands lingered, fingers dragging over Arthur’s skin, before they fell to his sides, stood there with his head bowed. “Take Kelpie. She’s a strong one, she’ll see you safe.” Charles shook his head, jaw tightening, fists clenching. “Charles,” Arthur said, and grimaced at the horses racing closer, “I ain't asking, and I ain't dying any time soon if you do what I say. Take Kelpie, get outta here."

Kelpie burred unhappily as Charles swung into the saddle, but she quieted when Arthur caught her by the bridle and tucked her head close, asked her to see Charles safe. When Charles tapped his heels against her flanks her ears folded back, but she kicked into a gallop all the same, skidding into the sharp turn west down the hill towards the river.

He looked real fine in Arthur’s old hat, sure and straight-backed in the saddle of an unfamiliar horse, pretty Taima loyally by his side, and Arthur carried close the glow of seeing the gang as safe as he could make them as he hid in the trees sheltering the entrance of the overlook.

There was no time to do more than kick off his boots, not with the O’Driscolls bearing down, and Arthur’s jeans and shirt tore as he changed in the shadows of the trees, teeth gritted against the tightness as the seams held and held and blowing out a breath of relief when they finally gave. But the important things were safe, his hat and gunbelt both with Charles, so he shook the tatters of his shirt from his shoulders and stepped out of the ruins of his jeans.

He folded his ears back against the thunder of hooves, slunk into the safety of the shadows between the tree trunks, crouching down behind the ferns; it didn’t take long for the O’Driscolls to charge into the Overlook, hauling on their horses’ reins to stop and jump down from the saddles. A score of them, ten or so at least, reeking of gunpowder and the sickly-sweetness of death, the bitterness of old blood. Green scarves on their throats or green coats around their shoulders, paled from weathering in the sun.

Their horses whickered, heads high, eyes rolling white as they scented the air - edging away from Arthur in the trees, even when the O’Driscolls on their backs cursed and yanked on their reins to stop them moving.

One O’Driscoll, bristling with rifles, knelt down between the bodies in the trees, the abandoned crates splintered across the ground, and put his fingers to the dirt packed hard near the entrance of camp. A frown creased his heavy brows. “They’re gone then?” Asked one still mounted.

“Aye,” Said the crouched O’Driscoll, and Arthur licked his bared teeth against the urge to growl; the O’Driscoll’s pale eyes followed the wagons’ tracks, grooves from wheels and furrows from hooves dug into the earth. “Can’t’ve gone far - tracks are fresh. Won’t be too hard tae find, I don’ think,” He said, standing and clicking at his horse, catching its bridle before it could shift away from Arthur’s scent on the wind.

“So,” Said another, nudging the foot of a fellow O’Driscoll dead on the ground, “What we gonna do? Colm ain’t gon be too pleased they ain’t dead.”

The O’Driscoll’s rifles on his back knocked together as he turned, a wooden clack of the stocks, and snorted, derisive - his lips curled. “We hunt 'em down,” He said, slow like he was talking to a child but an edge to the false-friendliness. “We spread out, keep in earshot, and we look ‘till the lot of ‘em are dead or we die trying. Caravan like tha’s easy tae spot, even fer someone as thick as you lot.”

“Hey!” Said the second O’Driscoll as a few others murmured offense, which sparked off a row as the few grounded men mounted up.

Eyes flicking between the horses, and the guns on the O’Driscoll’s backs and belts, Arthur swallowed his heart beating high in his throat. It didn’t get rid of the ache in his chest but it left space behind for a growl to roll through, a rumble from his mouth and through the dirt beneath his flexing claws as he rose from his crouch, stalked slow between the ferns and tree trunks.

It was a certainty they wouldn't find the right trail if Arthur led them north instead of west. There were a lot of wagons passing through New Hanover to muddy the gang’s movements - O’Driscolls didn’t have a beast’s nose to track scent, either, and even then the wind could carry it far away, riders and wagons and animals scouring away anything painted across the ground. But Dutch van der Linde’s werewolf was an easy lead; wolves caught far from family always fled to the safety of the pack if there was one to go back to, and made a good consolatory pelt to hand in to Colm besides.

Arthur crept upwind, circling around to the entrance of camp. The horses half-reared and shrieked in terror, striking out with their hooves and edging sideways, turned to keep eyes on Arthur and the exposed ridge of his risen hackles. Unused to beastfolk, where Dutch had always insisted even their horses stolen for selling be trained to keep calm around them; their fear jostled the O’Driscolls on their backs, held their attention as they struggled to keep control. Arthur pushed his growl higher in his throat, louder; heads turned to look, guns unholstered and shrugged from shoulders, pointed into the undergrowth.

“There’s a beast!” Ordered the first O’Driscoll, whose horse was calmer than most of the others’ beneath him, but the realisation of it had already been murmured behind him. “Van der Linde’s - keep yer eyes peeled!”

Slowly, careful never to betray more than a flash of himself - the gleam of teeth and shine of an eye, the hackles bristling along his neck - Arthur crept over to the trail leading away from Horseshoe Overlook, out of the copse of trees. The O’Driscolls’ guns pointed everywhere except at him, heads turning back and forth as they looked.

Growl rising into a snarl, Arthur stepped out onto the trail worn bare by their months living safe, and ran.

The shouts rang out, calling a hunt to anyone who might be listening but Arthur leapt out of the copse of trees and turned his nose to the north, darting between patches of trees, weaving between the trunks; the trail away from the Overlook was narrow, the trees packed close, the O’Driscolls too many to organise all at once, and Arthur was tearing across the strip bare of trees to Valentine by the time they caught up, kicking their horses faster across the ground, whooping and wailing like baying hounds, like coyotes on a hunt, to order folk out of the way.

Arthur leapt over the grass and road worn bare, lips pulled back into a snarl against the jarring thud of his paws against the ground, claws digging furrows into the soft earth; folded his ears flat against the gunshots, the _cracks_ of pistols and revolvers and rifles, as he threw his weight forward, panting in gusts between each strike of his paws against the ground, tongue trailing from between his open jaws.

Riders shouted, dragged horses startling at him out of his way; Arthur’s stride broke, a noise high and pathetic knocked loose from his throat, when his hind leg was shot out from beneath him. But it was only a shot to his thigh, the sharp pain easy to bear, the splash of blood no artery’s gush, so he dragged his foot beneath him and leapt onward, leaping ungainly across the grass and onto the road sweeping by the livestock market where sheep bleated at the scent of him on the wind.

The mud gave beneath his paws and he skidded in his turns but Arthur had claws to grip where horses only had hooves and the O’Driscolls were forced to slow on the main road through town; folk yelled, startled into abuse as Arthur turned up the main street, ears twisted back to listen, but they leapt out of his way all the same and the buildings flashed by, the stable, the new house, the bank thick with lawmen. Draft horses hauling a stagecoach stopped to rear and Arthur ducked beneath their hooves, their bellies heaving with their frightened bellows; their driver yelled into the din pressing against Arthur’s ears.

Another shot rang out, a rifle’s _crack_ echoing clear and loud over the town, and Arthur yelped before he could stop himself, lost beneath horses’ startled screams; grunted as he hit the dirt in front of the sheriff’s office, scalp stinging in the air. “It’s down!” Shouted one of the O’Driscolls, and Arthur whined at the rough brogue, blinking slow as he lay there, sprawled out on the road.

His head, he thought dimly as he raised it, staring dazed up at the blurry sheriff across the road, cigarette tumbling from between his fingers. His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth as he panted, a whine scraping across the back of his throat, paw pads damp and hot with sweat. Blood wound down the side of his face, his head - trickling across his skin, soaking dark the fur. Copper-sweet beneath the deep gritty taste of dirt on the air, the heavier stink of horse.

They’d shot his head, a hole in the mud where the bullet had buried itself. Not his ear, not even the short fur of his cheek. _They’d shot his head_ , a gouge over his brow, and he didn’t know if he should laugh or cry at the fact that the bullet hadn’t gone through it, only scraped it. Trembled instead of either, shaky, breath thin and catching inside his chest seized tight with the knowing of how very close it had been to killing him.

A howl pressed into his throat, risen from the ache in his pounding heart; the desperate wailing cry of a pup because suddenly, childishly, he wanted Hosea.

The O’Driscolls trapped behind the coach yelled, muffled and muted behind the thudding of blood in Arthur’s ears, the sharp stinging pain of the gouge taken out of the top of his head; cursing the horses pulling it and the coach driver who yelled at them to move. Locked, each unwilling to give even as the horses shifted and whickered and soured the air with acrid fear, and Arthur dragged himself to his paws, wheezing as he trembled.

Sheriff Malloy hurried across the street, bitter with cigarette smoke, and grabbed him by the scruff. Arthur gritted his teeth against the hold - twisted, instinct making him kick and snarl - but Malloy’s grip gentled once Arthur was up on his hind feet, enough that he let himself be hauled through the street, stumbling awkwardly.

“I don’t know what the _Hell_ is goin’ on,” Malloy grunted, wrapping arms around Arthur’s chest to drag him up the steps, shouldering open the door. “But you get in there, now.” Arthur’s heels dragged, and he clenched his jaw tight against the urge to wrench free but Malloy let him go before it won, watching him catch himself against the wall. Arthur’s claws tore through the wallpaper, a faint rasp Malloy’s eyes barely flicked to - there was steel in the sheriff’s spine as he drew the gun on his hip, but he wasn’t unkind as he said “Get yourself out of Valentine, wolf.”

He didn’t have the jaws to speak any thanks, and Arthur didn’t really know what to say even if he did, but sheriff Malloy didn’t give him the chance; the door swung shut between them as Malloy stepped back out into the street, hammer clicking into place as he aimed his revolver and stared down the O’Driscolls. Bellowed an order for calm, clear and unyielding and cutting clean through the noise, back straight and shoulders squared beneath his coat, head high.

Arthur had never been the brightest, but Hosea had raised him with enough sense in his head to know his only chance. And so, teeth gritted, jaw tight, Arthur shouldered open the back door, dropped to all four feet, and ran to Cumberland forest burning with the yellowing of its leaves in the autumn sweeping down from the mountains.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing Arthur's torment - **relatively graphic and repeated descriptions of Arthur's wounds** , so just skip to the final page break if it's too boring.

Arthur followed the train tracks west when he tripped over the steel rail running past Bacchus station. Walked - limped, wounded left leg raised and tucked close against the deep, stinging ache of the hole bored through his thigh - with ears trained back towards the road to Valentine all the while. But there had only been a few distant gunshots on the air, echoing through the wide, high-walled gorge sheltering the river rushing across the bed far below. When Arthur sniffed the air there had only been the wind, clean and chilled with the smell of riverwater, the deeper note of new leaf mulch beneath the birch forest’s swaying boughs.

It was luck more than anything that the tracks were clear of trains until Arthur stumbled off them a ways after a pass and an enormous spur of rock with a hole in it. His leg gave out halfway and he fell down the rest, curling up into the rocky dirt and short, spiky grass beneath the smooth, grey cliffs the railway had cut into; lay there a while, panting into the dust.

His ears turned on his head, swivelling and intent, but there was only the birds for miles around, the rush of wind over stone, the distant bugle of elk. No horses, tossing their heads and screaming terror as they were kicked into galloping after a werewolf, no shouts of triumph in an O’Driscoll brogue, no gunshots burying themselves into the dust and dirt and trunks of the handful of trees scattered over the clifftop he lay on.

He whined around the dull ache of his leg, his hip where it’d struck the ground, at the gouge on his head itching and stinging with the air, the grit in it. But he was alive, and alive enough to get back to the gang.

If any of them were alive to get back to.

He bared his teeth against himself, and turned his head. To the south, just across the river rushing blue through the gorge between them, was Valentine, spread out beside Cumberland Forest to its north, so if he followed the Dakota river downstream he’d pass Cattail pond, reach Wallace station and Little Creek River which would take him to Big Valley’s northern fields, and from there he knew the way south to their new camp. It was the quickest way there, but Arthur had already seen the O’Driscoll camps in Big Valley. He wouldn’t survive a second run-in with them.

Following the train tracks south all the way to Riggs station and walking upstream on the montana river’s northern side was much longer - much more dangerous with Strawberry so close by, all those people who’d take umbrage with a wolf so close by - but he’d miss the O’Driscolls, and he might be lucky enough to pick up the gang’s trail if they’d taken the road south of Strawberry, rather than the one through it.

Arthur braced his paws against the ground, and heaved himself up onto his forelegs, dragging his hind legs through the dirt until he’d hitched them beneath himself and could stand. What a sight he must make, he thought; shaking and panting with the effort, wounded leg tucked close, an eye gummed shut with blood that flowed down from a bullet graze on his head and fur stiff and stained with it - a yelp muffled in his throat when Arthur dragged his leg forward and it buckled under his weight as he tried an awkward step, muscle so tight it ached as he forced himself to stay upright.

The tracks were still quiet beside him; no rumble through the ground or rattle of the metal to warn of an oncoming train. The wind hissed, pushed itself through his fur, and carried the smell of dawning winter and the Grizzlies’ snow and Ambarino’s pine trees. He was safe, but not for very much longer; blood loss and infection killed as easily as bullets, after all.

Ears trained behind him, head low between his shoulders and teeth gritted, Arthur limped southwards alongside the train tracks.

-:-

The nights blurred after a while. Arthur slept where he fell in whatever half-safe shadowed hollow he found and drank from ponds and puddles, the occasional stream. He watched the turning of the sky, following the line of the Grizzly mountains south-westwards step by awkward step, teeth gritted against the burn in his shoulders as he dug claws into the earth and dragged himself along. Blood oozed steadily from his head and leg, fur glued and dried into stiff peaks by blood pulling on his skin.

A few trains passed by, screams of metal on metal, billowing acrid smoke and steam in a roar of burning light and noise there and gone in moments, leaving behind a dark deeper than before. Arthur didn’t turn his head - he was far enough from the tracks that only the wind of it passing by ever touched him.

Stone and cliffs slowly gave way to pines and hills. It was a miracle there was no infection in his blood as the moon rose and fell in the sky, the heavens turning as the autumn frosts froze hard and cold the ground.

Yet.

-:-

It hurt to walk. It had never not hurt to walk, not since the O’Driscolls shot him, but the ache was worse now. Each plodding step jarred his bones, a gnawing pain deep in his legs that bit down with every thudding beat of his heart. His hanging head swayed back and forth as he forced himself onwards, staring down at the dirt blurring beneath his nose.

The blood still hadn’t stopped flowing, either - the hole in his leg too deep, the gouge on his brow too wide; the scab that tried to form kept cracking and breaking open, a fresh sting from the air. His eye had gummed shut from the blood flowing into it. When he fell down for his next rest a part of him didn’t want to get up again, but he thought of Jack, and how hurt he’d be not to have his uncle come home. He thought of Sean, half his face shot open but blessedly alive enough to be taken to a doctor.

He thought of Charles, staring down an O’Driscoll poacher who had killed bison for horns, a werecat for its skin, and dragged himself to his feet.

-:-

The station was a smear of light against the dark. Lamps and lanterns and windows, burning against the night. Food in its walls, salted and chewy and strings of spit swayed from Arthur’s jaws, strung between his teeth, at the thought of filling a belly shrunk to his spine with hunger. A few blurred shapes cried out at him, though; a high piercing cry of fright and a lower shouted threat.

Wallace station, Arthur thought, and limped on.

-:-

The moonlight was cold but the grass was gilded gold as he followed the train tracks, the river, the howling of wolves and dogs, the yowling of cats, the bugle of an elk and the roar of a bear, the bleating of doe and the sharp piercing cry of a hawk and whinny of a horse and even the croaking of a duck. Louder still a bison lowed for him, soft and sad into the dark.

-:-

He walked into a tree trunk, a small patch of pines where the forest opened out to another station in the shadow of a tall hill, and fell. The sun made him think of Hosea, when he had been young and white-gold instead of just white, as it rose. He tried to stand, whine stuttering on his panting breaths, legs splayed and shaking with how hard he braced against the ground, but he fell soon enough, and couldn’t get up again.

Arthur howled for Hosea then, plaintive, but it was only riders and wagons passing by who took notice. Most scowled, pointed guns at his head swaying limply back and forth. A dark haired woman crouched and looked into his eyes, close enough he could see hers widen, and got someone to lift Arthur into the back of her wagon.

She shouted at him, urgent and frightened, when Arthur lay his head down and let his eyes close, but her voice was muffled, muted, behind the shallow beating of his heart, the mournful cries of beasts beyond the hills.

-:-

Arthur didn’t know much about houses, because the only one he could remember actually sleeping in was miss Bessie’s homestead (and even then only because Hosea insisted it was too cold for him to dig his usual hollow in the snow outside, his only concession to leave Arthur a wolf and only if he slept in the corner of his and miss Bessie’s room. Arthur suspected he didn’t want to risk another repeat of the boar and the scarring along his flanks bare of fur, but Arthur didn’t resent being forced inside as much as he maybe should have. It had felt good to be with Hosea and miss Bessie again, after the long year without them). He supposed he found himself in a nice enough bedroom; there was a bed, at least, and a small table beside him, and the blankets were soft on his bare skin. The wooden walls were warm, the curtains drawn shut over the windows a cheerful yellow and glowing bright with the sunlight shining through.

He wasn’t dead, at least, and found himself grateful that he didn’t remember too much after Wallace station except vague impressions of a woman and the sting of whiskey and a needle through his skin.

And there was a dog, flopped over his ankle. A puppy, with big flapping ears and enormous paws batting the thick rope it chewed on, big liquid brown eyes blinking up at him. So the bedroom couldn’t be bad.

Arthur held out his knuckles for the dog to sniff. “Hullo,” He said, all quiet and friendly, lips over his teeth to be polite. The dog, not yet old enough to know how to be polite back, only gave his hand a cursory sniff before it leapt up to lick his face.

It was young, leggy and plump-bellied and round-faced, still, so Arthur turned his head away from the kisses and smoothed his hand over the dome of the pup’s smooth-furred skull, gently rubbing a velvety ear as the dog wagged its thick tail hard enough its whole body wriggled, whine stuttering in its throat from its eagerness. A labrador, Arthur thought, and smiled as he stroked the pup’s back, pushing his nose into its cheek to breathe in the baby-smell of its fur. Though it wasn’t much of a baby no more if it could be bought by another family - he heard no other pups in the house, after all, except for an older dog barking a ways away, muffled through all the walls.

The pup, absolutely delighted, sneezed into Arthur’s ear.

“You’re up, then,” Said a woman, and the doorframe creaked a little as she leaned on it, arms crossed over her chest.

“Seems so,” Arthur agreed, and cradled the labrador pup close in one arm. His heart pulled a little in his chest, but it was an easy enough thing to push away - he hadn’t shared Isaac’s story with most of the gang, and he had known some of them years; he didn’t need to share the ache holding a young dog put in his chest, not when the weight and feel and smell of a pup in his arms would always remind him of holding Isaac when he had been too young to change his shape. “Thanks,” He added, gruff, as the pup set to gnawing on his knuckles. “For makin’ sure I woke up.”

The woman eyed him, dark hair lank around her face and dark dress hanging on her thin frame and bruises beneath her eyes darker still, heavy with bags and her whole face lined before its time. There was a sorrow in her familiar from mrs Adler, the same kind of steel beneath it as she met the dim shine of Arthur’s eyes.

Slowly, Maddy nodded to herself, arms dropping to her sides. “Didn’t think I should’ve,” She said, not so much harsh or cruel but honest, and Arthur could appreciate that. “At first,” She added, as if she’d seen something in Arthur’s face she thought she needed to cut off. Arthur couldn’t think of anything she might have seen - he understood, probably wouldn’t have stopped and saved him either if he were her. “I figured, after what _he_ nearly done to me, what he did to my Norman, what’s one less werewolf in the world?”

Maddy looked away, up at the window with its drawn curtains. Further than that, maybe, to Micah shooting up Strawberry to kill that poor feller for his guns, all them long months ago. Her hands clenched tight in the skirts of her dress, the heavy wool bunching as her face crumpled, eyes squeezed shut - throat tight even as she forced the words out, voice thin as she said, “God, I hated you, half dead there by the road. Thought for a moment I should’ve taken my guns and killed you there, wouldn’t be nothing against killing him but maybe I would feel satisfied. Maybe I’d feel _something_.”

Arthur looked away, showed the side of his jaw to pacify Maddy’s anger hot and bitter as smoke on the still air. The pup gave up on Arthur’s fingers, and he stroked the pup’s head again, gently scratching behind its ears. “I understand, ma’am.”

“What could you possibly understand, dog?”

Grimacing, Arthur studied the labrador’s sweet little face, its big dark eyes and smiling mouth, its tail thumping Arthur’s arm as it wagged in delight at making a new friend. Tracing an ear - too big to be a wolf-pup’s, those tiny little folds shut against the world before they straightened - Arthur cleared his throat. “I love fierce, ma’am,” He said, and squeezed shut his eyes against the memories of his little boy, his pup who he hoped had gone quick while knowing his father loved him, and the weight of Maddy’s stare, demanding and heavy on the side of his face. “Lov _ed_ , anyway - been burned by it so often I ain’t sure I got the capacity left. Nearly died from bein’ burned once, weren’t-... weren’t none too pretty, I’ll tell you that.”

He pressed his nose back into the pup’s fur, breathed in the smell until he was sick with it, let it settle him. It was a dog and unfamiliar and not his boy, but it was a baby-smell all the same, so terribly familiar. “I gotta get back to the gang,” He said, and stroked the pup’s back. “If you still want to kill me you do it after I make sure they're safe; if any of 'em's left to check on, anyway.”

“That why you was half dead when I found you?” Asked Maddy, and when Arthur looked something in her was softened, arms still crossed but fallen a little, the anger in her fainter on the air. Something passed through her eyes. “I didn’t think your kind was the type to get shot to save any hide that weren’t their own.”

“For most of us,” Arthur told her, “There ain't too many things we wouldn't do for them who's our family.”

Maddy’s hands tightened into fists as she raised her chin. “And that wolf of yours who shot my husband? Who would’ve shot me?”

“He ain’t my nothing,” Said Arthur, harsh enough Maddy took a half-step back before she steeled herself, “C’ept some aches and pains after I beat him for bein’ some goddamn lunatic what likes killing.” He worked his jaw, clenching it tight before his face could push out into a muzzle. “Me and mine, we ain’t saints, but we got good people and we got a code - we don’t tolerate senseless killing - and I’m the one who makes sure it’s followed. I made sure he learned why the others don’t test it after the stunt he pulled, ma’am, and he's got another stunt he needs answerin' ow too.”

She studied him for long moments, from behind lank hair and her tired-bruised eyes as dark as the mourning dress hanging from her frame, and Arthur met her gaze as best he could. The steel in her gleamed in the dim light through the curtains, even as she shifted away from the yellow-green shine of his eyes through the gloom.

Eventually, she nodded to herself, arms falling to her sides as she stepped back. “I only saved you,” She said, “‘Cause I recognised your eyes, and I ain’t enough of a fool not to know the only thing what saved me that night was you. I suppose I am grateful to you, if only ‘cause I don’t like the thought of my boy growin’ up without me as well as his daddy.” She took a breath deep into her chest, shoulders squaring. “My Norman’s clothes are in the wardrobe,” She said. “Get out of my house, wolf, and don’t you say nothing about what we done for each other.”

Arthur held the pup for long after she had disappeared into the house, long enough the little dog squirmed free to scamper after a young boy dashing through the hall, but he did as he was told. He traced the short bullet scar on his leg, the stitches binding it closed, and the scrape on his brow healed into the shiny pink of a new scar, and breathed out a sigh, eyes closed and head bowed.

Norman’s clothes hung off him, but Arthur had worn worse in his time and it was shield enough against the cold as he trudged up to the stable to collect his faithful Walker once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely mean to Arthur, he gets to wake up to a puppy when really he should probably be dead.


	26. Chapter 26

Their pet O’Driscoll was wailing as Arthur walked his bay into the new camp, chest tight with the joy of finding them safe and sound, though it was lost somewhere under Kelpie’s furious screams as she flung herself against the tether binding her by rope halter to the hitching post. Blood sweetened the air as the kid cradled close his bitten hand, eyes shining with the pain of it, but sweeter still was the smell of the gang, ground down into the rocky earth and in the familiar spread of camp.

For a moment Arthur closed his eyes against it, the camp sheltered behind the trees at the base of the mountains’ slopes, safe under the bright light of the afternoon sun. His heart pulled in his chest and he pressed his palms flat to his knees to hide their tremble of relief as he breathed in the acrid stink of campfire smoke and the deeper note of family just beneath.

Because there was miss Grimshaw by the main fire, hollering at the noise, and Karen poking her head out of Arthur’s tent whose walls had all been unrolled and shut tight against the world, and Abigail with Jack sitting at the table by Pearson’s wagon. There was Pearson making stew, Tilly and Mary-Beth cutting vegetables, and the Reverend sat nearby staring out into the trees, and Lenny at the table in front of Dutch’s tent cleaning a camp repeater, and Bill a bear lumbering loudly through the trees around camp. There was Dutch in his tent, Hosea by his side holding right to his hand, smoking a cigar as he watched the dark between the trees’ trunks, and John sat beside Lenny drumming fingers on his knees.

There was Charles who turned to the entrance of camp first, on guard by the hitching posts, the repeater he raised falling from his hands with a dull clatter as Arthur dismounted. There was Arthur's hat on his head, and the speed of him rushing across the ground; the strength of him, the crushing grip of his arms around Arthur’s shoulders as he clutched him close.

“You’re alive,” Said Charles, choked thick by something he struggled to swallow as he buried his face in Arthur’s shoulder.

Arthur patted Charles’ broad back, cleared his throat. “More’s the pity,” He agreed, but he closed his eyes as he turned his face into Charles’ jaw for a moment, buried his nose in the hollow behind his jaw and breathed, before he took his hat and stepped away from the hold. Charles let him go, arms dragging slowly, palms lingering before they finally fell, and Arthur looked away and cleared his throat again against the shine in Charles’ dark eyes, the warmth. “ _Jesus_!” He said, rearing back, “The Hell you done to your hair?”

Charles blinked at him, touched the long braid that were all that was left of his hair, a stripe down his skull and the rest shaved to the skin. “You go missing for _three weeks_ ,” He said, “And you’re upset about my _hair_.”

“Ain’t _upset,_ ” Arthur mumbled, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Jus’... you looked fine with all that-” He mimed the sweep of it, and scowled when Charles laughed at him, round and full and fond. “Forget I said nothin’. What happened with Sean?”

“Miss Grimshaw put him in your tent,” Charles said, and gathered up his fallen repeater as Kelpie, quieted with the triumph of biting through the rope that bound her, shoved her head into Arthur’s chest with a pleased burr. “He’s healed up better than the doctor expected, but he's been quiet. I heard Karen say she's worried about it.” He watched as Arthur pressed his face to Kelpie’s, murmuring praise and his love for her, his pride even as her velvety muzzle left a smear of blood over his wrist. His shoulders squared as he breathed deep, held it for a long moment, but anything he might have said lost the space to be spoken into as the gang took their chance to crowd around, their O’Driscoll shooed away to tend to his hand and Kelpie to the pasture with Arthur’s Walker.

Arthur let himself be swept up in it, gruffly returning hugs from Lenny and miss Grimshaw and avoiding Uncle who attempted one, let the hands clapped to his shoulders relax him, scent pressed into clothes and the skin beneath to make strong the claim of the gang on him. Bent down to scoop up Jack who ran up with a shout of joy and refused to let go all through everyone else trying to take their turn to welcome a lost brother returned home.

Though even little Jack gave due deference to Hosea, a rare growl in his throat to scatter the crowd and arms spread wide for Arthur to fold himself in close for the hug. Arthur breathed, and Hosea breathed, turning into each other to chase scent, Hosea’s chin digging into the crown of his skull as he sighed, “ _Arthur_.” Hand gripping gentle his shoulder Hosea swayed him back and forth, eyes squeezed shut. “Oh Arthur,” He said - a harsh scrape through his throat, and hushed enough in Arthur’s hair even beasts could barely hear, “Oh, my boy. _My_ boy.”

Hosea left no space for him to sweep into, but Arthur closed goo eyes with a sigh as Dutch rested his hand on his shoulder, warm and heavy. His voice was thick, eyes shining, as he murmured, “Micah said you was dead, son.”

Arthur snorted derision into the furred lining of Hosea's cost collar. “Ain’t my time just yet."

The scent of a foreign house and home was chased away, beaten out of his borrowed clothes as Arthur was passed around, greeted in turn and tucked back into the fold, but he was let go into his own tent soon enough when he pulled away. Though most of it was miss Grimshaw beating everyone back to their places, because no matter the hug she crushed Arthur into, the breathless delight she murmured to him, camp still needed running as usual.

His tent was dark when he ducked inside, bare of his things except his cot and his chest at its foot. But there was Sean, smiling a wide puppy grin as he sat up even beneath the bandages tight over half his face, and Arthur let himself be pulled into one last hug. “English!” Sean crowed, and bullied Arthur into sitting beside him on his own cot. “You’re lookin’ as terrible as I feel, old man! Not as spry as you used tae be, eh?”

“I see you ain’t dead, then?” Arthur grunted, harsh even with the smile that pulled at the corners of his eyes. It was good to see Sean alive, of course it was, but Sean didn’t need to know that. He was insufferable enough with the joy he found in himself, Arthur didn’t want to know what he turned into when other people were open about their own joy in seeing him safe. “Here I was hopin’ we mighta been getting some peace and quiet at long last.”

Sean reared back, hand on his heart and mouth open with offense. “Ach! You _wound_ me, King Arthur! Here I am, a brother shot in the head defendin’ the family he loves, and one of his other brothers comes waltzin’ in back from the dead like it’s nothin’ and he starts right in on the insults!” He reared back a little more when Arthur only watched him unmoved, eyes half-lidded. “Oh spare me, English! I’m a grievously wounded man here! Laid out on his deathbed awaiting sweet oblivion, full o’ the bitter regrets he’s leavin’ the love of his life behind!”

Arthur leaned his elbows on his knees, and watched Sean long enough the kid started to falter, falling a little. “I ain’t no sorta medical man,” He drawled, “But I killed enough folks to make the educated guess you’re making too much noise to be dyin’ any time soon.”

Huffing, Sean gave up and slumped, elbows on his knees in some pouting, irritated imitation of Arthur pressed up warm beside him. A victory Arthur let himself smile at, shutting Sean up from what might’ve turned into a long, _long_ tirade about his death and the hole in the world his death was leaving behind and the undying love of the woman he’d sworn his heart to, and anything else he decided to ramble about.

He looked well enough, even beneath the bandages. Pale even by his Irish standards, skinnier than he’d been even freshly sprung from the bounty hunters so long ago, but not dead was always a good look and Arthur let it settle him some, more than the scent of the gang returned to his skin could settle him. Whatever mess was hidden beneath the bandages wrapped tight around Sean’s head, the lingering threat of infection if the bullet wound hadn’t healed all the way just yet, he was alive, bright with the scent of the gang and living heat and heartbeat drumming loud and stubborn inside his chest that rose and fell with every breath.

They’d lost Strauss (though, guiltily, Arthur felt no twinge in his heart at the loss. He had never been close to Strauss, and usury had turned his stomach besides) but they hadn’t lost Sean, and that was a good enough omen for Arthur.

Gently, he knocked his elbow against Sean’s. “Y’okay?”

Sean, head bowed, stared at his hands hanging limp between his knees. His shoulders rose and fell with his sigh, and uneasiness prickled cold across the back of Arthur’s neck at the smallness of it, the bob of the Adam’s apple along his long throat. “Aye, good enough, English,” He said. “Good enough.”

“Don’t seem so good.”

Face twisting in a grimace that might have been a smile, Sean poked at his eye beneath the bandages. “Ach, this old thing? Ain’t nothin’ at all, King Arthur - Mary-Beth was tellin’ me all the ladies love a good battle scar!” Arthur stared at his hand until Sean dropped it, head twisting a little to show the side of his throat. Sean’s Adam’s apple bobbed in a swallow. “Listen,” He said, an attempt at hardness in his voice, cool and flat like a sheet of iron, except Sean wasn’t built for that, “I don’t need no guff from you old man, ‘bout getting my face shot open like a young’un blinkin’ into the glory of this life o’ ours. I damn well _know_ already-” Sean’s jaw tightened, hands clenching into fists between his knees, frustration maybe at Arthur but just as easily at himself in a wrinkle of his lips, “- that I should’ve been better’n to get shot by _O’Driscolls_ of all things, but any one’a you coulda been put down like I was and-”

Arthur caught Sean’s gaze, held it until his mouth clicked shut. “Doctor got you patched up okay?”

Sean’s mouth went slack a moment, and Arthur let himself delight in getting the little bastard to shut up for a few moments. Didn’t last, more’s the pity, ‘fore Sean remembered himself and looked away before the urge to bristle grew the hackles risen in a threat on the back of Arthur’s neck, rubbing his mouth.

“Aye,” Sean murmured. “Way he said it five more minutes and you’dve come back from the dead to talk to a corpse there, English, not just that old lizard Strauss. Got your-" He waved his hand at Arthur's satchel on his small bedside table, "-Bag there." He swallowed, don'tsh gaze flicking back and forth over Arthur's gaze." Thanks, Arthur, fer helping Karen pay for it.”

"'Course," Arthur grunted. "You might be one'a the most annoying little bastards I ever met, but you're _our_ annoying annoying little bastard. Would'a done the same for any one of ours."

Sean's ees, shining through the gloom with the dim sunlight bleeding through the tent’s thin walls, stared out through a crack in the tent flaps, out at the camp beyond where camp spoke loud and cheerful with good news. The corner of his mouth lifted, glance sly. "Even Micah, English?"

Rumbling a threat in his throat to a feller not even nearby to threaten, Arthur's grin was cruel. "He ain't one of us," He said.

Grinning, eyes turned away a little and head held a little low to keep the threat from the playful baring of his teeth, Sean’s eyes gleamed. “Aye, and he's got you tae answer to now!”

He yelped when Arthur shoved him, and again when Arthur levered himself to his feet with a groan by his shoulder, but it was the high yapping of play as he sprawled out over Arthur’s cot like he’d been shot again so he didn’t feel too bad leaving him behind. "Don't you think nothing of it, boy," He grunted. "Don't need you getting bitten to death on top of everythin' else."

Still, Arthur thought as he settled down with a bowl of stew Dutch shoved into his hands, watching miss Grimshaw chase Sean into his usual tent with Javier and the Reverend for him; it was good to see them all, mostly whole and mostly unhurt, happy enough to laugh as Sean made up some story of past conquests to make Karen, scent hot and bright as her pretty face flushed dark and blotchy, holler after him into the shelter of the trees.

Safe in the chill of the reaching shadow of the mountains that sheltered them, without Micah at its edges leading O’Driscolls to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing to really say about this chapter, it's just a nice bit of fluff to break things up. Had to edit this over my phone, though, so if there's any typos or out of place words let me know, and I'll fix it as soon as I can.


End file.
